Thea Jaffe never expected to use a baby bank. In fact, she was responsible for referring other single parents from her local community group to the charity Little Village, which provides essential supplies for new parents who might not otherwise be able to afford them – everything from strollers and cots to clothes, nappies, toys and books.
But when Jaffe, who lives in London, unexpectedly became pregnant with her second child, she couldn’t afford to buy everything she needed. “It’s so overwhelming to have to accommodate a baby without a budget,” she told CNN.
“I was already struggling financially… but I didn’t know how bad things would get… Now things are at a point where I’m working full time, and I can’t pay my bills.”
A Little Village baby bank in Wembley, North London is stocked with items new parents may need. – Issy Ronald/CNN
Child poverty has hit a record high in the UK as the country’s cost of living rises and its social safety net falters after years of government austerity. With public services severely weakened, charities such as Little Village stepped in.
About a third of Britain’s children – around 4.5 million – now live in relative poverty, often measured as living in a household earning below 60% of the national median income after housing costs, a government report published in April found.
A million of these children are in need, and go without meeting their most basic needs of staying warm, dry, clothed and fed, according to a 2023 study by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, which studies poverty and formulates policy to address it.
“We met one family that was still surviving on cornflakes and rice,” Little Village chief executive Sophie Livingstone told CNN.
“We have a lot of families that are in one room, a lot of mold, a lot of very poor quality housing even when people are housed,” she added.
‘Survival mode’
Even for families who are able to meet the basic needs of their children, life is a month-to-month struggle, without any financial security.
“You just live in fear all the time and that’s not a fun place to be when you have kids depending on you,” Lia, a single mother to 7-year-old twin girls, told CNN after being connected through the Changing Realities Project, which documents low-income parents. She asked to use a pseudonym to protect her family’s privacy.
“They want to do the same things their friends are doing… but the budget won’t allow it,” she said. After paying for the essentials every month, there is no money left.
“Every time I go out, I have to be vigilant and diligent to make sure I’m not overspending. That’s a really anxiety-inducing situation to be in.”
A law graduate living in Hampshire, south-east England, Lia initially returned to work but says she is often called mid-meeting by her childcare provider if one of her children, who has complex needs, dyspraxia and global developmental delay, was having a “tantrum or meltdown.” Eventually she had to quit her job.
“I go into survival mode,” she said. “I was in the (foster) care system growing up and I remember feeling so much struggle and anxiety like, ‘if I can get through this, it’s going to be ok.’ However, that situation has not changed; as much as I know I have a lot to offer and I try to be a good member of society, I still feel that no matter where I turn, there is difficulty.”
And even for families earning well above the poverty line, the cost of housing and childcare, especially in London, can be so high that there simply isn’t any money to spend on anything else. About 70% of children living in poverty have at least one working parent.
Thea Jaffe is seen at a Little Village baby bank with the youngest of her three children. – Little Village
Childcare is more expensive in the UK than in most other wealthy countries – costing around 25% of a couple’s net income and around 60% of a single parent household’s net income, according to figures released by the think tank The Institute for Fiscal Studies in 2022.
Jaffe, the mother who uses the Little Village baby bank, works full-time in client solutions and says she earns £45,000 ($59,000) a year to support herself and her three children – well above the UK average. Anyway, she says she is “struggling every month to make sure everything is paid, she can’t save anything, she can’t do things for my children.”
After paying for the essentials – rent, childcare, food and household bills – she’s left with £192 (about $250) a month for emergencies and to save for the following month in case there’s a mistake in her next social security payment – something she says is a regular occurrence.
‘No resilience left’
Although child poverty has always been present in the UK, its rate is increasing – and much faster than in other wealthy countries. Between 2012 and 2021, it increased by almost 20%, UNICEF found. Now, in 2025, the UK’s child poverty rate is higher than that of any European Union country except Greece, according to the Resolution Foundation, a living standards think tank.
The organization estimates that another 300,000 children will fall into poverty by 2030 if nothing changes.
The current poverty rate reflects inequalities present elsewhere in society, too. Almost half of children in Black and Asian communities are living in poverty, compared to 24% of White children, while children living in single-parent families or in families where someone is disabled are also more likely to live in poverty, figures from the campaign organization Child Poverty Action Group show.
Part of this increase is due to the same economic conditions affecting other parts of the Western world – sluggish growth, and jobs that no longer offer the same financial security, as well as stubborn inflation that disproportionately affects essential goods and, therefore, low-income people.
Renata Acioli (centre), who runs the Little Village baby bank in Wembley, is pictured with fellow staff members Sharna Singh (left) and Yosr Bahr (right). – Issy Ronald/CNN
But academics and lawyers say policy decisions also played a part. Britain’s public services were cut by the centre-right Conservative-led coalition and the subsequent Conservative government in power from 2010 to 2024.
And as part of his austerity program, which aimed to reduce public spending after the financial crisis of 2008, the Conservatives introduced three policies that “are very responsible for the increase in child poverty today”, said Jonathan Bradshaw, professor emeritus of social policy at the University of York who also served as one of the academic advisers for the current government’s strategy on child poverty.
These have limited the amount of social benefits they are eligible to claim – one is a general limit on the benefits a family can receive, another limits housing benefits and the third is a benefit limit of two children, which means that parents cannot claim anything for their third or subsequent children born after 2017.
Charities and academics say it is this two-child benefit cap in particular that is largely responsible for Britain’s rising child poverty rates.
“Most of the increase in child poverty has occurred in large families,” Bradshaw told CNN.
The former finance minister of Great Britain, George Osborne, was one of the main architects of austerity. – Darren Staples/Reuters
All this shows the “inadequacy of the benefits system,” says Peter Matejic, chief analyst at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
“If you raise how much you need for food, energy, all these things, and you look at how much (the benefits are) … it’s below that level,” he told CNN.
When UN envoys Philip Alston and Olivier De Schutter visited the UK in 2018 and 2023, respectively, they both condemned the poverty they saw there, although De Schutter noted that the country conformed to a pattern of rising inequality seen in other wealthy countries.
Political association
A spokesman for the current Labor government, which has been in power since July last year, told CNN that “every child, regardless of their background, deserves the best start in life.”
“We are investing £500 million in children’s development through the launch of Best Start Family Hubs, extending free school meals and ensuring the poorest don’t go hungry in the holidays through a new £1 billion crisis support package.”
Tackling child poverty has been a declared priority for the centre-left government and, at the same time, an issue that illuminates fault lines within it.
Since coming to power, Labor has struggled to balance the mandate for change on which it was elected, and its traditional inclination to invest in public services, with scarce funds available and a manifest promise not to increase taxes on working people.
Its plans to reduce child poverty have so far been hampered by this problem. More details about the government’s spending and tax plans are due to be revealed in the budget on Wednesday, in which Chancellor Rachel Reeves, the UK finance minister, is expected to address the two-child benefit limit, a policy the government has oscillated between keeping and scrapping for the past year.
But for parents already on the line, their household budgets have been stretched too far, for too long.
“People have no resilience left,” says Livingstone, remembering that when she began her role as the head of Little Village “we were talking about the safety net that has many holes.”
“I’m actually not sure there’s much of a safety net,” she says.
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