Removal of £20 Universal Credit uplift and impact on...
ADCS President Charlotte Ramsden said:
“The research from the University of Liverpool reinforces the links we regularly highlight between deprivation and children coming into contact with children’s services. Child poverty impacts on health, education, family pressures and increased safeguarding needs. That the new research shows the removal of the £20 Universal Credit uplift could have such a direct and dramatic impact on the number of children being subject to a child protection plan or entering care, should reinforce the need for urgent action. Whilst care is the right place to be for some children, pursuing policies that will knowingly exacerbate the difficulties families face and even tip them into crisis seems very far removed from the promises of levelling up the country.
“We know that the loss of this uplift risks pushing hundreds of thousands of children into greater poverty overnight. The pandemic has exposed the stark inequalities between disadvantaged children and their affluent peers. Just this week the Work and Pensions Select Committee called for a renewed strategic focus on tackling both the symptoms and root causes of poverty as well as the development of a cross departmental strategy. We cannot go on as we are, the stakes are too high. Poverty damages childhoods; it damages life chances; and it damages the future economic prosperity of our country.”
ENDS