Children play on a bridge in a kids play area

Children's mental health

Informing the government’s new Child Poverty Strategy to center children’s health and wellbeing

What would a practical, effective, long-term Child Poverty Strategy actually look like? We’re supporting Child Poverty Action Group to find out

Key information:

Partner: Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG)
Amount: £44,216
Duration: 12 months
Programme: Children’s mental health

What we are doing together

We are supporting Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) to carry out research to understand what it would take to effectively deliver a cross-government Child Poverty Strategy.

Established in 1965 CPAG is the UK’s leading charity working to prevent child poverty. Being forced into poverty has a huge impact on your mental and physical health, and this is equally true for children. The distress caused by not having access to a safe, secure home, nutritious food, or spaces to relax and play, is well evidenced but still overlooked in so many conversations about our young people’s mental health crisis. Together with incredible partners like CPAG we want to address these external drivers of poor mental health so that every child has access to the things they need to thrive.

While there has been research over recent years outlining what an effective Child Poverty Strategy should cover, there are significant gaps in evidence around what it would actually take to effectively deliver this kind of strategy and make it work long term. In light of our new government’s commitment to tackling child poverty and the recently established Child Poverty Taskforce, CPAG set out to create a roadmap on the specific, technical detail a Child Poverty Strategy would require.

Key components for an effective cross-government Child Poverty Strategy currently identified are:

Clear leadership, infrastructure, and targets to work towards
Social security that supports us all
Decent work, pay and progression
Quality, affordable childcare when families need it
Inclusive education
Secure homes for families
Services and support for children and families (including health services)

This project would explore these components in detail by conducting further analysis on the following:

The policy infrastructure that is needed to support the delivery of an effective child poverty strategy across government (including local government)
The targets, measurements and indicators that should underpin a strategy so that there is clear accountability and success can be evaluated.
The key policy recommendations that should underpin the different policy areas outlined above (social security, work, housing, health, education, childcare)

Child poverty is at a record high, blighting children’s lives now, and jeopardizing their futures. It is imperiling their health, education, future employment prospects – and even their life expectancy. The new government’s commitment to developing a child poverty strategy is welcome. Done well, a strategy can be extremely effective at lifting children out of poverty – as evidenced by the last Labour government which lifted over a million children out of poverty this way.

But the devil will be in the detail of the strategy and we are delighted to be carrying out this work to explore what an effective child poverty strategy for today looks like given factors such as increased devolution and more in-work poverty. This is critical work to help ensure the new strategy really is capable of taking millions of children out of poverty.

Sophie Howes, Head of Policy, CPAG

Aims of the partnership

The ultimate aim of this partnership is to identify a practical, effective, long term Child Poverty Strategy that is acted upon by our new government and leads to improved mental health for millions of children and their families.

CPAG aim to complete the following stages across the next 12 months:

Desk based research, literature review and mapping, particularly focused on what was learned from Labour’s anti-poverty drive in the early 2000’s
Identification of key actors in politics, civil service, and service delivery for expert interviews
Interview analysis and amalgamation of key insights and actions
Write up and policy engagement, including written briefings, roundtables, media activities and events at Labour Party Conference.

We think there is a real opportunity for the new government to tackle childhood poverty and have a significant impact on children’s mental health as a result. CPAG is going to learn from policy experts to develop practical recommendations around how government should deliver a child poverty strategy. We are excited to support CPAG with this work and learn with them throughout the process.

Stephanie Woodrow, Children’s Mental Health Portfolio Manager, Impact on Urban Health

Strategic fit

One of the key recommendations from our work with the Centre for Mental Health was to support a Childhood Poverty Act. The report we commissioned with them in 2022 explored the drivers of poor mental health for children in Lambeth and Southwark and found that poverty and the way it intersects with racism creates a huge amount of distress and trauma in young people’s lives.

Not having a warm, secure home, or access to nutritious food, or safe spaces to play, all have an impact on children’s mental as well as physical health. And addressing access to mental health support, though crucial, is a sticking plaster while millions of families are forced to live without these needs being met. That’s why ending child poverty is at the heart of our strategy and why the same must be true of our new government.

This research will complement a portfolio of projects that aim to increase families’ income and tackle some of the systemic drivers of inequality such as unsafe, insecure housing. We are funding King’s College London to run a cash transfer trial for families in Lambeth and Southwark to help us understand more about the impact of additional income on children’s mental health and the best mechanisms for redistributing wealth. We are also exploring ways to reduce the negative impact of temporary accommodation on children’s mental health.

Informing the government’s new Child Poverty Strategy to center children’s health and wellbeing

Key information:

What we are doing together

Aims of the partnership

Strategic fit

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