Child Poverty Taskforce - Terms of Reference (HTML)
Published 19 December 2024
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Background
On 17 July 2024, the Prime Minister announced the creation of a new Ministerial Child Poverty Taskforce.
Child poverty has increased by 700,000 since 2010, with over four million children now growing up in a low-income family. This not only harms children’s lives now, but it also limits their future prospects and it holds back our economic potential as a country.
Purpose
Tackling child poverty, across the United Kingdom, is at the heart of the government’s mission to break down barriers to opportunity and improve the life chances of every child. It is about ensuring a foundation of economic security for families, recognising the importance of happy and thriving childhoods, and a commitment that background must not limit opportunity.
The role of the Taskforce is to oversee the development and delivery of an ambitious cross- government Child Poverty Strategy to reduce and alleviate child poverty. The aim is to improve children’s lives and life chances now and tackle the root causes of child poverty in the long term.
Objectives
The Ministerial Taskforce will harness all available levers to drive forward short-term and long-term actions across government to reduce child poverty, by:
- Supporting households to increase their income including considering social security reforms that support people into work and alleviate poverty
- Helping to bring down essential household costs, build savings and tackle problem debt
- Alleviating the negative experience of living in poverty, including through supporting families and the role of public services.
Published August 2024
Approach
The Taskforce will deliver on its objectives by:
- Bringing together expertise from across and beyond government to develop a UK- wide Child Poverty Strategy;
- Driving combined action across government departments to maximise impact, delivering system-wide, enduring change and holding departments to account for their contributions to the strategy;
- Galvanising the national effort that will be needed to really make a difference, working closely with external partners across the UK, including the devolved governments, combined and local authorities and councils, business and civil society, to feed into the strategy. The Taskforce will listen to the voices of children living in poverty and their families; and
- Publishing a full Child Poverty Strategy with metrics which can be tracked, in spring 2025.
The Taskforce will engage external experts throughout. This will include:
- A rolling programme of meetings between the Taskforce and experts during the strategy development process, with sessions built thematically to bring together a range of experts on specific topics.
- The Taskforce will also draw on findings from wider external engagement events in all regions and nations of the UK. These events will convene a broader range of voices, including bringing in the perspectives of families and children themselves.
The Child Poverty Strategy will be UK-wide.
The Taskforce will work closely with the devolved governments, combined and local authorities and councils, drawing on experience across the UK, to meet our shared ambition to tackle child poverty.
Governance
The first meeting of the Taskforce will take place on 14 August 2024.
The Taskforce should meet regularly from August 2024 through to publication of the strategy in spring 2025.
The Taskforce will be supported by a Child Poverty Unit in the Cabinet Office. The Unit’s role will be to coordinate the development of the strategy across government and ensure it reflects the Taskforce’s strategic priorities. It will be comprised of officials from DWP, DfE, MHCLG and HMT.