By Patrick McNulty, Policy and Research Assistant at Barnardo’s
At Barnardo’s we support families, children and young people experiencing poverty across UK. This has been an integral part of our work for over 150 years. Most recently we have provided urgent crisis support to families through 800 services through an emergency fund, designed to help those struggling to afford the essentials. This included providing food vouchers for families and helping them top up their gas and electricity meters.
Between October 2022 and August 2024, when our crisis response began, we supported over 18,560 children, reaching over 31,751 people in over 9,875 families. Helping with food and fuel costs were among the most common issues with the families we supported. Parents told us they frequently had to choose between heating their homes or putting food on the table. This prompted us to investigate the relationship between rising food and fuel costs and child poverty, and in October 2024 we published a report ‘Empty plates and cold homes’.
We heard from over 100 Barnardo’s frontline workers who have been supporting families directly with food and fuel costs. One of the most common challenges facing families is the choice between heating and eating, as one worker recounted:
‘[There was] no money, despite working, it didn’t cover the bills, so it was heat or eat for them.’
Many workers reported instances of children growing up in cold homes with one worker recalling during a home visit, the house was so cold that ‘the family had been sleeping together in the living room to stay warm’.
We know that growing up in a warm home with food on the table is vital for a child’s health and wellbeing – this was mentioned by many Barnardo’s practitioners who shared their insight with us. One commented that when supported with access to food and adequate heating:
‘Children were happier, they were able to function better in school, due to having a better sleep (and) not going to bed hungry.’
To better understand these issues at a population level, we conducted polling with YouGov of over 2,000 parents. This revealed that 1 in 4 parents (25%) struggled to provide sufficient food for their child in the last 12 months up from 1 in 5 parents (20%) in October 2022. We estimate this affects 3.4 million children in the UK, three times the population of Birmingham. 1 in 3 parents (33%) reported having to cut back on energy bills in the past 12 months. We estimate this affects 4.6 million children in the UK, seven times the population of Glasgow.
In our report, we included five key recommendations:
- Develop a long-term scheme for local crisis support after the Household Support Fund ends in March 2025
- Implement an Essentials Guarantee in Universal Credit so families do not go without essentials like food and fuel
- Extend free school meals to all primary school children in England
- Set out plans to address holiday hunger after the Holiday Activities and Food Programme ends in March 2025
- End the two-child limit in the social security system which affects children who have two or more brothers or sisters.
This last recommendation is our key recommendation for the UK Government. It is critical that the Government takes action to end the ‘sibling penalty’ – one of the most cost-effective means of lifting children out of poverty. It would lift 490,000 children out of poverty at a cost of £1.7bn.
To read more about our report, click here.
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This article is featured in our 30 October newsletter.
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