The new Child Poverty Strategy: What does it mean?

Building A Better Future

In December 2025, the UK Government published its first comprehensive Child Poverty Strategy in more than a decade, titled Our Children, Our Future: Tackling Child Poverty. This is the Government’s long-term plan of how ministers aim to dramatically reduce child poverty by 2035 and covers tackling the root causes of deprivation, boosting family incomes, and strengthening local support services. Despite the major significance of this, little information has yet to be made clear on what this means for charities and wider civil society.

What is the Strategy?

The core idea of the new Child Poverty Strategy is simple: no child’s life chances should be limited by poverty. Although the UK remains a developed country, the rate of poverty in the UK has continued to rise, with a sharp increase since the Covid19 Pandemic and the subsequent Cost-of-Living Crisis. This has resulted in worsening gaps in health and attainment between children from affluent families and those who from families with low or no household income. For UK Muslims, this is particularly significant as the community continues to suffer some of the highest rates of poverty across the UK, compounded by intersectionality.

The Strategy details how the Government will be taking action in three ways:

Increasing family incomes — including reversing policies that have cut support in recent years. Full details on this are yet to emerge.

Reducing essential costs — making everyday life more affordable for families, especially those on low incomes. This includes food, clothing, utilities and education.

Strengthening local support and services — from childcare and early support hubs to crisis funds that help families in urgent need. These services have been woefully lacking both pre and post Covid.

Officials estimate that, if fully implemented, the strategy will mean around 550,000 fewer children living in relative low income by 2030, and roughly 7.1 million children seeing increased household incomes.

Key Measures That May Affect Your Community:

While the full strategy is broad, several specific policies stand out as particularly important for the families you may work with:

✔ Abolishing the Two-Child Benefit Limit

One of the biggest changes is the removal of the so-called two-child limit on Universal Credit and Child Tax Credit. This rule used to mean that families only received support for up to two children, pushing many larger families — including single parents and families in marginalised communities — deeper into hardship. Its removal is expected to deliver the largest, fastest reduction in child poverty.

✔ Expanding Free School Meals and Breakfast Clubs

From September 2026, all children in families receiving Universal Credit in England will be eligible for free school meals. The change means that all households receiving Universal Credit, above the current £7,400 income cap, will qualify for this support at Primary and Secondary school level. However it is worth noting, this does not currently include families with No Recourse To Public Funds (NRPF) and this unlikely to change.

✔ Reducing Costs of Essentials Like Baby Formula and Childcare

The strategy includes changes to help families save on baby formula with clearer pricing and display rules, and reforms to childcare support to reduce upfront costs for parents returning to work.

✔ Better Identification of Children in Crisis

Local councils will be legally required to notify schools, health visitors and GPs when a child is placed in temporary accommodation, so children experiencing homelessness get earlier support from services. This multi-agency working should pick up those children whose home situation changes and moves them deeper into poverty and at risk.

What This Means for Your Work

For grassroots organisations working with marginalised families or those experiencing the strain of poverty in all its forms, the strategy should strengthen current safety nets and creates new opportunities to support families. However, it will remain to be seen how much this impacts those suffering abject poverty and typically excluded from support. Charities, community groups, mosques and other community and faith services will remain vital in supporting families.

Moving forward, although change takes time, more families may access benefits and school-related support. This may increase requests for support with outreach, navigation, and ensuring families take up entitlements they qualify for. This may impact signposting and referrals with Local Authorities as the strategy emphasises collaboration with local partners – meaning charities and community groups can play a vital role in shaping services that work for their communities.

Through this work, data and monitoring will help to evidence the strain on charity services but will also gaps that still exist – it’s therefore important that you continue to record evidence of the services and value you deliver. It is hoped that grant funding streams will develop with priority on children, young people and unrestricted, core funding to reflect the gaps and particular groups who remain the most in need.

What You Can Do Now

✔ Help families understand and access new entitlements, such as expanded free school meals and childcare support. Find the latest information here:

✔ Build partnerships with schools, health visitors and councils, especially around identifying and supporting children in crisis. If you need support in approaching your local CVS or Local Authority, our advocacy team can advise : [email protected]

✔ Share lived experience evidence with local decision-makers to ensure services are culturally responsive and reach refugee, asylum seeker and migrant families who may have “No Recourse to Public Funds.” (Government has signalled engagement across departments on this front, though gaps remain and details remain unclear.) It’s important that our voices are heard, in line with charity advocacy guidance.