The 2-child limit
I met a client on Friday at the Women’s Centre. Let’s call her Claire.
Claire has 3 children and works part-time in a fairly low-paid job. In addition, she receives child benefit for all 3 children (paid in full to the Credit Union who then pay her some back every 4 weeks – ‘they help me out with loans when I need them’), but her Universal Credit is reduced as a result. The child element of UC is paid for 2 children only.
The four of them live in one room while they wait for a Housing Association property to become available. She needs 3 bedrooms; 2 of her children can share 1 bedroom.
Whatever her reason for being at the Women’s Centre, we did not discuss, but she is suffering from crippling anxiety which means she cannot always turn into work. Her boss is very understanding, but no work means no pay. She is trying to do more hours but the cramped housing conditions mean that she often gets no sleep. It doesn’t help the anxiety. It doesn’t help the children either.
What Claire needs more than anything is space and security. Something she hasn’t had for a long time.
But when she gets a new roof over their heads (hopefully soon), Claire will need to be able to afford the bills; the rent, the Council Tax, the gas/electricity, the water, food, school clothes, non-school clothes, shoes, travel costs, phones etc etc.
Claire will get some help with the rent via UC, and a small amount of help with Council Tax, but the rest will be on her shoulders.
And there will be absolutely nothing forthcoming from the children’s father, who has disappeared into the mist. So for any ‘right’ thinking folks who might advise not having children ‘if you can’t afford them’, bear in mind the absent parent who has also let these children down.
If the 2-child limit is meant to cause such deprivation that it drives a single parent into work, thereby supposedly preventing 3 or more children being brought up in dire poverty, then it has failed. Claire is employed, but cannot make ends meet. Wages are low. Childcare is expensive. Anxiety is crucifying.
Living in dreadful conditions, with a raft of debt and bailiffs waiting in the wings, means that her mental health is deteriorating. She is metaphorically gasping for air here, and sinking.
Whatever the suits and policy-makers say, this is a cruel and egregious attack on people who are trapped in poverty. The children are suffering as a result, guaranteed.
I have heard Labour politicians talk about delivering ‘costed’ policies when asked about this (Yvette Cooper on GMTV for example) as a means of explaining away Keir Starmer’s declaration that this cruel Tory policy is now going nowhere. (Another U-turn).
I can’t believe any decent-thinking politician would throw Claire and her kids under the bus like this. Don’t they realise the long-term damage this will do?
Claire and her children have been utterly failed by this government, and it’s with a heavy sense of regret that I fear the next government is gearing up to fail them again.
More on this from Patrick Butler in The Guardian 👇
