Children's mental health
Stronger financial support in the first 1001 days of a child’s life is needed to ensure children in the UK get the best start in life. What would a maternity grant re-designed by mothers and children look like?
Download the report (pdf)The Children’s Mental Health programme exists to break the links between poverty, racism and poor mental health. We recently entered a ‘wind-down’ phase following the decision to close the programme. Prior to this, we had an increasing focus on the early years of a child’s life (the first 1001 days), due to the rapid cognitive, physical, emotional and social development that happens in this period.
Having a baby in the UK is expensive and many families find themselves in a tough financial position due to the cost of living, inability to work and inadequacy of statutory maternity pay and benefits. We therefore want to advocate for preventative approaches during this period that give children the best start in life. This piece pulls together our learning and evidence around financial support during the first 1001 days of a child’s life.
Having a baby in the UK is expensive and pushes many families into financial precarity. A survey of mothers by Maternity Action found that 17% struggled ‘a lot’ to buy the things they needed. One in ten mothers had to turn to food banks and more than 55% of respondents borrowed money or used credit cards to support themselves.
Financial precarity has a profound impact on maternal mental health, with 59% of respondents stating that money worries had impacted their health and wellbeing negatively. The choice to have a child and take off time to care for them should not be pushing women and families into poverty.
With so many children in the UK living in poverty, more financial support for families is clearly needed during this important period in life.
The Sure Start Maternity Grant (SSMG) in England, Wales and Northern Ireland is insufficient and much lower than other comparable countries, according to a report published by our partner, Child Poverty Action Group.
Currently the SSMG is a one-off payment of £500 available to families living on lower incomes on the birth of their first child. Only 8% of newborns receive the support each year due to eligibility and barriers to access. In comparison, the Best Start Grant Pregnancy and Baby Payment in Scotland provides eligible families with £797 on the birth of the first child, with £398 for each subsequent child, and is uprated each year.
When we look beyond the UK, the contrast is even more stark, with maternity grants in countries such as Australia and Japan being over £1500. These amounts demonstrate an understanding of how expensive newborns are and the role of government in helping families to meet these costs.
Impact on Urban Health funded The Liminal Space to lead a co-design research project with 30 local mothers in Lambeth and Southwark, who are part of networks and groups run by our partner Parent Action. We wanted to understand what an equitably designed maternity grant, that put mothers and babies at its centre, might look like.
Unsurprisingly these mothers felt that £500, the current SSMG grant, was insufficient and that up to £2000 would be more realistic in today’s context. This aligns with CPAG’s recommendation that in order for the SSMG to have a meaningful impact on reducing child poverty, a current aim of the Labour government, the grant would need to be increased to £2,500 for each newborn. Critically, the evidence showed that long-running programmes that have not adjusted benefit amounts in line with inflation show diminishing effectiveness over time.
The current welfare system is complex and there is a lot of stigma attached to receiving benefits. Rigid eligibility criteria can be tricky for families to navigate and exclude people in need of support. CPAG found that only 48,000 families seem to be receiving SSMG. This accounts for only 8% of births, which is surprisingly low. Universal eligibility, particularly for all those on Universal Credit would reduce barriers to access. The local mothers also warned against processes that might make them feel deprived of dignity, with one participant noting ‘It shouldn’t be a dehumanising experience because mothers are the backbone’.
Additionally, the mothers spoke about the importance of having autonomy to spend the grant on what was most needed by their child through a direct bank transfer separate from Universal Credit. As one mother put it ‘If it’s a gift, then make it feel like a gift. Don’t just lump it in with Universal Credit… extra needs to feel extra’. Evidence around cash transfers demonstrates that unconditional cash was predominantly spent on food, housing, childcare and healthcare, which challenges the assumption that conditions are needed for effectiveness.
Timing of maternity and newborn cash transfers vary significantly across countries. In France the grant is paid during the seventh month of pregnancy, whilst in Luxembourg the payment is split into three instalments from pre-natal to post-natal. The mothers we worked with in our community research had a strong preference for a lump sum payment made after the 20-week scan as the first few weeks after birth can be overwhelming.
Both projects demonstrate that the current maternity grant in England, Wales and Northern Ireland is not meeting the need of those it is designed to support. Local mothers and policy experts are aligned in the belief that the SSMG can and should be redesigned if it is to make a meaningful difference to mothers and families in this critical time. This review should centre the experiences of those receiving this support, and consider the amount of the grant, the eligibility criteria, and how it is administered. Stronger financial support in the first 1001 days of a child’s life is needed to ensure children in the UK get the best start in life that they can.
When Impact on Urban Health first commissioned The Liminal Space to conduct this community research, we were interested in the idea of piloting a maternity cash transfer trial in Lambeth and Southwark. We decided not to pursue this route due to the complexities of running a trial that we as a funder were not best placed to manage. We also learnt of a pregnancy grant trial led by Camden Council providing £500 to families living on low incomes that we have been following closely.
It is particularly striking that the community research and policy report align on so many of the inadequacies in financial support during maternity and how it might be improved. It reinforces that mothers, at the forefront of these challenges, are the experts and should be listened to by those designing policies and programmes to support them. Through this we also learnt about how important non-financial support is during this time and will be sharing more on this in a future blog.
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