Changing Realities at the House of Lords - The Child Poverty Strategy

Good morning, and thank you to Baroness Lister for inviting the Changing Realities Project to this important roundtable event. Brian, Rachel, and myself, Jo, are all participants and between us have shared our lived experiences throughout the life of both the Covid Realities research project and now, Changing Realities. The project is about documenting life on a low income and began online at the beginning of the Covid pandemic.

Changing Realities is a place where our stories and experiences are shared and recorded in diary entries, where our Big Questions (of the week), Big Ideas meetings, creative journaling and so much more, help to create a living archive rich in real testimony about our lives on a low income.

The core of our work has not changed, but we have. We have spent, in some cases, years together, uplifting our voices and learning how to be part of a movement for change, and we are proud to be here to represent our work and the people within.

We are a community of over 200 parents, carers, families, researchers and stakeholders, who have come together to share and document our most intimate experiences of living at the sharp end of policy decisions amongst many other injustices, and we are here today to add our collective voices to the call for a child poverty strategy that shows our government have listened.

Our voices have remained a mere whisper in the places we should be heard the loudest, and we thank the Government for opening the door and importantly, including our lived experience in shaping the child poverty strategy. We see this as a starting point for meaningful change, and we look forward to continued engagement with policymakers...

In preparation for this event, we asked ourselves - What has changed over the last 5 years? It became clear as we spoke, that for so many of us, things have become worse, and this is very much reflected in our diary entries that are published on the Changing Realities website, some of which we will share with you, although we do hope our visit today will encourage everyone to dive deeply into our work.

The cost of living is extortionately high, and more so for families on low incomes; the stakes are high for us, whether in or out of work, and speaking to this, I want to quote Brian and Rachel, each feeling invisible as we look to governments and politicians for some comfort in these times of acute austerity.

For Rachel – Life feels in freefall. She is a lone parent working 4 days a week but the loss of wage value combined with sky-high prices for essentials like food, fuel, even water to wash at home...means her living standards are at the same level as when she was unemployed in the early 2000s. Rachel has said she honestly had a better quality of life as a student, but now, Rachel has a child to raise.

Brian and his daughter have spent 10 years living in poverty. Brian’s daughter has now entered adulthood, and he can see the damage poverty has caused and how it will continue to influence her prospects as she goes through life, with so many missed opportunities that could and should have been avoided.

Brian and all of us on the project feel that the government must understand that child poverty does not only affect working families, despite the constant references to only, working families; it also includes the hardships of those who are unable to work due to illness or disability. There is often the need for extra help from their children with daily tasks, and you only get one childhood…

It isn’t ‘just’ five years that we have lived in austerity. We are looking to those in places of power to truly understand the devastation that over 15 years of austerity has caused to the landscape of our homes. These are the places that should offer safety, comfort, satisfy basic human needs at the very least and these have been and are being decimated by injurious policies and corporate greed at a time when we most need support.

Our input into the Child Poverty Strategy is crucial in turning around the futures of our children and the success of all communities across the UK. We know, that our inclusion, will offer diverse and very real examples of the best and worst of our experiences to spark the work, the legacy of change that we need.

Through the Changing Realities project, we have stepped away from our silence. We have spoken to journalists and politicians, spoken our truth to power in number ten Downing St, at the DWP and the DfE, as Ministers and civil servants have heard firsthand our raw testimonies to inform the child poverty strategy.

We have presented our work in spaces we might never have otherwise seen from Social Policy Conferences in Wales to Cafes in the North with the BBC. All of the time, the researchers, stakeholders, our friends and colleagues, have diligently recorded words, findings, thoughts, ideas and more. In doing so, vital evidence emerged showing us that we were not alone, that so many more people were having the same issues, facing the same challenges. And today, this coalition knows better than any other, what we need to do to get this right.

We would like to bring in some of our diary entries to show the effects of poverty, right now, in the UK, on children and families. For example, Sadie shared:

The daily challenges to survive and keep a roof over our heads and food on the table leaves no money for spending on my children's wellbeing…They are constantly having to get accustomed to getting by with less and less. (Sadie Q, Aug 2025)

And Sal said: Whether you are a single parent or a two-parent household, the costs are outrageous and children are suffering. They are suffering in education and with special needs due to wait times to be assessed and it’s just unfair. (Sal B, Feb 2025)

I myself, have been massively economically impacted by poverty caused by fragmented and inadequate systems for SEND and SEMH support. The administration for and of any disability can often be as demanding as a full-time job and perhaps more so as emotional trauma and the negative impact of poor mental health adds to the layers of poverty the current systems of support impose in far too many cases.

We hear from people in our communities, our neighbours in poverty who have no recourse to public funds, parents managing day to day prioritising essentials and only dreaming of the things that some of us in this room, would not even consider living without. There is no freedom in that life. We heard this from Bertie:

As a lone parent with no recourse to public funds, I have to prioritise and manage my daily living expenses. Although working a part-time job makes it difficult to meet certain necessities in life, I try to leave the less important issues for another time… Childcare is my major challenge. If I could get support on childcare, I could work full time to pay bills and not struggle this much. (Bertie V, August 2025)

You only get one childhood, and the imprint of inequality in our homes is immense and enduring, it sets a damning precedent for our children’s ambitions and the chance they might reach their full potential. We don’t count the ones left behind in a hostile and underfunded social care system; we don’t count the impact of policies and the cost of living, on families in temporary accommodation and the effect on their lives and those of their children, uprooted daily as they are moved on…

We are often exhausted parents trying hard to hide from our kids the mental gymnastics of managing tiny budgets in a big cost world. The hidden school costs like buying new school uniforms, sports kits, paying for field trips and social activities, the digital poverty we and our children experience, this all has a negative impact on low income families. We have to compromise relentlessly and that can mean going without essentials - from toiletries for our teenage kids, to shoes and even food in this harsh reality. These hidden costs affect kids' performances at school because if we can’t afford to pay for them, our children miss out on so many opportunities, and as Brian has told us, he can see the impact now in his adult daughter.

How can people continue to have hope whilst living and dying in “austerity”, which is governmentally imposed on the majority but contrasts very steeply with the millionaire and even billionaire, growing minority?

We are carrying the hardest hope to carry, we know that direct and lasting change can be achieved, that we can, with urgency, work side by side with policymakers.

The government needs to turn the tide on poverty. It is far too easy to end up in poverty through no fault of your own but almost impossible to find a way forward and out. This inevitably impacts future generations.

An ambitious Child Poverty Strategy with a HUMAN FIRST approach is essential to combat the rising need inside our communities, and we want to speak to this and again call for the removal of both the two-child limit and the benefit cap which are murdering the futures of thousands and thousands of children. These are political choices, and we urge the government to make the right choice, the only choice, next month.

Will the removal of either of these policies help Brian or Rachel or me? No, it will not, but the Changing Realities Project was never about us simply helping ourselves. We are echoing the voices of millions of people, and we deserve to be represented in this Child Poverty Strategy, after all, it is our children who are watching and living this…

Finally, a quote from another parent, Dotty, who says: A successful child poverty strategy would involve initiatives that would improve access to affordable housing, healthcare, education and childcare, all of which are factors that are increasing child poverty in the UK at present. (Dotty G, January 2025).

The waiting must be over now, we need to see change, and we need to see it now.