Hundreds of “hidden” food banks have revealed record levels of food poverty in the UK. Research from the Independent Food Aid Network (Ifan) indicates that the true level of food poverty…Read more…
Food bank Britain
As families already struggling under a generation of austerity are doubly hit by the introduction of Universal Credit, food bank use has skyrocketed and now stands at an all-time high. The…Read more…
No child should go hungry
Austerity harms every one of us but it is poorer children who bear the greatest brunt of the government’s funding cuts to public services – the UN published a damning report last year condemning…Read more…
Christmas pain
Families up and down the country will be desperately struggling at the worst time of the year as thousands will feel the full force of the government’s new benefit cap which many in Manchester were…Read more…
‘Downright immoral’
During his first autumn statement Chancellor Phillip Hammond told MPs he would not be reading out a list of pet plans – except for one. “I have deliberately avoided turning this…Read more…
Child Poverty is on the Rise and Concentrated in the Places the Government’s Policies Will Hurt Most
Today the End Child Poverty coalition published their annual Child Poverty Map of the UK which local authorities and parliamentary constituencies across the UK and shows the proportion of children living in poverty in each. (Full disclosure: the TUC is…Read more…
Three quarters of the people hit by the Benefit Cap are children. Today, things got worse
Today, the government took another step to increase the number of children in poverty. They have done this by cutting the Benefit Cap, first introduced by the Coalition government. Outside London, the number of people in need whose benefits are cut is …Read more…
Official: Universal Credit is “less generous” than tax credits
For the first time, an authoritative statutory body has recognised that the cuts to Universal Credit announced in last summer’s Budget will mean that it is much less generous than was originally planned, making it effectively a cut when compared with Working Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit which it…Read more…
For our kids’ sake
Child poverty skyrocketed again last year, as the latest figures published today reveal an increase of 200,000 more children living in households that are struggling to make ends meet. The…Read more…
Children’s charity set to strike
Senior executives at Action for Children were being urged to resolve a long-running pay dispute through the conciliation service Acas today (February 15), as members of Unite overwhelmingly backed…Read more…
Win for vulnerable children
Last week (25 January) the House of Lords voted by 290 to 198 to keep child poverty targets the same, forcing the government to rethink its plans to abolish them. Back in July, work and…Read more…
The broken child poverty pledge
I have a post at politics.co.uk, (written on behalf of the End Child Poverty coalition) looking at the Welfare Reform and Work Bill – if passed, it will mean the government no longer has to report to Parliament on progress helping children out of poverty. This will mean that there will be no…Read more…
You can’t learn when you are cold, hungry and worried about where you will sleep
In 2014, there were over 3.5 million children living in poverty in the UK. That is 28% of all UK children – or for those of us in education, 9 children in every class of 30. These shocking…Read more…
Academies are the government’s childlike solution – to everything
Laura McInerney, editor of Schools Week, gives us her take on the first 100 days of a Conservative government. There’s a moment in every child’s life where they happen upon the secret to all of…Read more…
No support for abolishing the Child Poverty Act
The government can’t be accused of pussy-footing about. In this Parliament we’ve already had the most radical Budget for 20 years, an attack on trade unions that out-Tebbits Norman Tebbit and cuts to tax credits that will force thousands of low-paid workers and their children into…Read more…
Swimming through vomit
The debacle created by interim leader Harriet Harman on welfare has created Tory accusations of a split when we should have been putting clear red water between Labour and the Tories. Their vile…Read more…
Iain Duncan Smith tears up the Child Poverty Act – and tells us he’s going to “improve” it
Well, after David Cameron prepared us for savage cuts to Child Tax Credit, lots of people expected that the government was going to change the Child Poverty Act substantially. After all, the last five years of cuts led the Institute for Fiscal Studies …Read more…
Child Poverty- Still a national disgrace
I have lost track of the number of Tory-leaning folks I have known over the years who have trained as teachers and then undergone a swift political conversion. Not because the staffroom is…Read more…
Schools and teachers have to fill the holes in the welfare safety net
Last month, an overwhelming majority of the 2,000 members of the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) replying to a survey said that their schools were providing support for children from deprived backgrounds. The same proportion – 84 per cent – said that they were providing more of…Read more…
May Scotland in UNISON now online
Election special, Health conference reports, Glasgow strikers and reports from UNISON at the STUC on TTIP, local government, pay, union rights, poverty, environment, child care, BME workers, ethical care charter, flexible working, pay and much more. Take your copy into your workplace and share it or see it online at at http://www.unison-scotland.org.uk/siu/index.html and on issuu at http://Read more…