FORTY-THREE per cent of the parents and carers of under-18s told a survey that they experienced “every day anxiety about their funds”, Christians Against Poverty (CAP) has warned.
The organisation’s report, Child Poverty: Insights into the true challenges families across the UK are facing, published on Thursday, draws on data commissioned last December from a sample of 2000 adults within the UK. It says that “the burden of responsibility and pressure to supply for kids is a heavy burden,” and that “parents sometimes go without so their children have what they need.”
Further research undertaken at the top of March found that multiple in ten (12 per cent) of the parents with children below the age of 18 had “skipped food up to now 12 months so their child/children could eat, because of this of economic challenges”.
CAP’s policy and public-affairs manager, Juliette Flach, said: “Many parents on low incomes are facing immense pressure this summer with high prices, the continuing costs of providing for his or her children and school-holiday expenses.”
One of CAP’s clients, Nicole, found the summer holidays particularly “difficult”, and would need to sacrifice things for herself. “I used to need to skip meals sometimes in order that they could eat and I’d just have a number of the leftovers,” she told CAP.
“Food is the most important extra cost, and your kids all the time appear to grow in the summertime; so clothing costs add up as well. I used charity shops, and other people at church gave us some clothes.
“Being in debt takes over your life. Plenty of anxiety comes with it, and I used to be on medication on the time. I used to have physical panic attacks.”
The report says that folks unable to cover the prices of the “essentials” would often tackle additional debt; and 31 per cent of the respondents who were parents or carers of under-18s had a deficit budget.
Additionally, 35 per cent of the parents and carers of under-fives had debt that they were struggling to repay. Although parents and carers would “often try hard to shield their children from financial difficulty, it should still have an effect on their mental and physical health”, the report says.
“Families and single parents’ financial situations and incomes can change significantly over time. Job loss, a relationship breakdown, or health issues can all mean some parents who could once afford the fundamentals for his or her children may now not have the option to,” Ms Flach said.
A major cost to folks is childcare; 20 per cent of the parents and carers of under-fives who responded to CAP’s survey said that “childcare costs prevent them increasing their income from paid employment.”
Ms Flach said: “Having kids comes with additional costs and can even restrict parents’ opportunities to work which makes them more prone to falling into unmanageable debt.”
The two-child limit on advantages, she said, was trapping many low-income families in debt. The charity is looking for it to be removed (Comment, 16 May).
“They need a social-security system where rates are sufficient to guard them from poverty and never trap them into it by providing so little that they’ll’t even afford the essentials,” she said.
She urged the Government to “take daring motion” to ease the pressure on parents. “For too long, children have been left behind, and no decisive motion has been taken to deal with the foundation causes of poverty. This is totally unacceptable: no child must be left hungry, cold or have their future held back.”
