This new child poverty unit, based in the Cabinet Office, has a brief to help ministers create an “ambitious strategy”, to work to understand and respond to the deepening issue of poverty for children and young people across the country. The taskforce will consider how ministers can use policy levers in areas such as education, household income, housing, children’s health and childcare to tackle child poverty.
The first meeting of the taskforce is set to take place in the coming weeks and secretaries of state from across government will take part in the work, number 10 has confirmed.
Childhood poverty has increased dramatically in recent years, with reports and statistics painting a bleak picture of children living in increasing levels of poverty, with parents and carers struggling to feed, clothe and heat homes for children.
The Disability Poverty Campaign Group (DPCG) who campaign collectively to find solutions to end poverty for the Disabled community have written to the education and pensions secretary to ensure that the needs of Disabled children across the UK are considered in this taskforce, along with an offer to collaborate and bring disability-led experience and campaign work into the fold.
Earlier this year it emerged that the proportion of families with Disabled children living in poverty had risen by nearly a third in two years, even before the cost-of-living crisis, according to a poverty measurement developed by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP)
Dan White, one of the co-leads at the DPCG said: “It is good news that this new government have admitted that childhood poverty is a growing and disturbing issue and that they are reacting to it.”
“The DPCG however have taken this opportunity to write to the government and those overseeing this issue to emphasise that a “one size fits all” policy solution will not work for all children.”
“Disabled children have specific requirements that must addressed, discussed and implemented if they are to be drawn out of poverty which is unfairly impacting their lives, and that is where the DPCG and its coalition of vast disability related poverty experience can help.”
“We sincerely hope that, unlike previous governments, UK Labour with its new collaborative vision, will respond to our letter and allow us to help finally eradicate poverty for children everywhere. Disabled children already live on the fringes of society, and their life chances are slipping away thanks to ignorance and misunderstanding. We can remove those issues, and work to give them all they deserve if given the chance.”