Some children are living in “Dickensian” levels of poverty, England’s children’s commissioner has said.Dame Rachel de Souza said children have described living in homes with rats, seeing bacon as a luxury food and not having a place to wash.She insisted the government should scrap the two-child benefit cap, which prevents most families from claiming means-tested benefits for any third or additional children born after April 2017. A spokesperson for the government said it was “determined to bring down child poverty” and it had announced a £1bn package to improve crisis support, including funding to ensure poorest children do not go hungry outside term time.The Labour government had been considering lifting the limit, but at the weekend the education secretary refused to commit to doing so.Bridget Phillipson said ministers were “looking at every lever” to lift children out of poverty – but that spending decisions have now been made “harder” after the government axed other benefit changes which would have saved billions.Speaking on BBC Breakfast on Tuesday, England’s children’s commissioner Dame Rachel said: “I have been doing this job for four years but I was shocked by how much worse things have got.””It really is Dickensian and there are a huge number of children now who have dropped below what anyone of us would think is reasonable,” she said.”The children who have got no food to eat, the children who can’t wash their clothes so they are going to school dirty and if they’re lucky the school are washing their clothes for them.”I had one child tell me about his shame because he couldn’t have …
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[mwai_chat context=”Let’s have a discussion about this article:nnSome children are living in “Dickensian” levels of poverty, England’s children’s commissioner has said.Dame Rachel de Souza said children have described living in homes with rats, seeing bacon as a luxury food and not having a place to wash.She insisted the government should scrap the two-child benefit cap, which prevents most families from claiming means-tested benefits for any third or additional children born after April 2017. A spokesperson for the government said it was “determined to bring down child poverty” and it had announced a £1bn package to improve crisis support, including funding to ensure poorest children do not go hungry outside term time.The Labour government had been considering lifting the limit, but at the weekend the education secretary refused to commit to doing so.Bridget Phillipson said ministers were “looking at every lever” to lift children out of poverty – but that spending decisions have now been made “harder” after the government axed other benefit changes which would have saved billions.Speaking on BBC Breakfast on Tuesday, England’s children’s commissioner Dame Rachel said: “I have been doing this job for four years but I was shocked by how much worse things have got.””It really is Dickensian and there are a huge number of children now who have dropped below what anyone of us would think is reasonable,” she said.”The children who have got no food to eat, the children who can’t wash their clothes so they are going to school dirty and if they’re lucky the school are washing their clothes for them.”I had one child tell me about his shame because he couldn’t have …nnDiscussion:nn” ai_name=”RocketNews AI: ” start_sentence=”Can I tell you more about this article?” text_input_placeholder=”Type ‘Yes'”]
