How would you tackle child poverty and improve outcomes?

Also bring back evening classes so parents can retrain for better jobs around their existing commitments (when the other parent is more likely to be around for childcare).

Employers to be incentivised to provide on-site creches.

A lot of the dads are on benefits themselves and ‘have no money’

Its not a silver bullet.

Make the cost of childcare part of cms and have it be split regardless of when it is used or which parent needs to use it. NRP should not be able to avoid paying for childcare by only having the children on their non-working days. RP should not face childcare bills alone.

Well exactly. Supporting your mother better would have supported her children, especially support given really early on.

I know. Just look at this website in the last 24 hours - a poster whose son is eating himself to death at 20-odd because benefits are funding his sedentary lifestyle of junk food, and poster whose young and chaotic daughter is pregnant and expecting to have everything provided via benefits.

I just despair and we get no say in it. Benefits aren’t even helping them - the bad choices are enabled by benefits as well as the other way round

I don’t know but what I have first hand experience of is going to school with a sock in my knickers because there’s was sanitary towels at home, no heating and holes in my shoes and a slice of toast for dinner.
Growing up like that ruins your self esteem and makes it impossible to concentrate and do well at school, which then screws your future.
Luckily meeting my husband completely changed my future but looking back do I think my “poor addicted to selfishness and cigarettes mother needed for support? No, I think her children did though.

Money management advice. Eg, budgeting, batch cooking, etc

Education is the ultimate key to improving outcomes, though.

So educate parents through Sure Start centres, make it as easy as possible for children to stay in school and get an education - this involves looking at what schools are actually for, as the current curriculum may not be fit for purpose.

I’d also make child maintenance a factor in any benefits received, and child maintenance to be calculated as 50% of a notional cost per child not depending on income. This would not reduce the amount the resident parent receives from the State, but the non-resident parent would have to reimburse the State for benefits paid that they - as the other parent - should have been responsible for. The debt could be interest bearing and repaid in the same way as student loans, but not written off.

No but I am supporting children of parents who are clearly unable to care for them early on rather than constant chances to mess up their life

I can't say what I would do to ensure the feckless in society do not breed children they have no hope in hell of providing for on a public forum....
Ideally every child born in this country should have the best start in life, provided by it's parents.
Benefits (UC top ups) should not be seen as a way of life. Too many people have children and decide instead of working to provide for them that they will do the minimum hours required to top up their wages at the tax payers expense. This needs to stop as of yesterday.
Perhaps if we weren't focused on topping up lazy people's wages we would have spare cash for things like Sure Start, FSMs, and more inexpensive full time childcare.
It should never have become a choice to rely on the State (everyone working an paying tax) to fund an easier lifestyle for some families.

Those adults were mostly likely removed at a few hours old, from mothers who would have liked to keep them but didn't have the support to do so. Are you advocating that?

Removing older children brings very different outcomes. Even at a few months old.

Sadly in many cases it is.

Adoption used to be common and I know several adults of 60-80 who were adopted as newborns; all very successful and no drink/drug problems.

Worlds away from the end result of kids who ricochet from care to parents and back again.

I agree.

While I do think we need more social housing, and that improvements are needed to the private rental sector, it does play an important role. For instance, people moving to new areas who want to know what the area is like before buying, to name just one example.

I’d ban AirBnB / holiday lets before private rental for housing.

Depressingly I’m not sure you can.

I don’t like most of the measures in the OP because they assume the child being away from their parent(s) as much as possible is in the best interests, and it isn’t.

How is child poverty different from 'poverty'?

I’m really not. My life has been very far from privileged. You’re making huge assumptions. I had social services involvement, addict parents etc

You're coming from a position of privilege though, with a stable upbringing and strong support network...I'm prepared to bet. If you don't have that it can take all your "work ethic" just to survive.

But that's why the support that's needed to really solve the problem will never happen, becuase "most" people can't comprehend how difficult life is for some.

I haven't suggested that benefits are the answer at all, and absolutely support the idea that people shouldn't need them, but you can't achieve that just by taking them away. It will need massive investment to solve the problems that got them there in the first place.

By putting money back in parents’ pockets, by reducing the cost of child care and by creating very strong financial incentives for parents to have only the number of children they can actually afford to support. And if that number is zero, so be it.

Because you would be amazed at the work ethic necessity produces. And work ethic generally decreases poverty.

And that improves child poverty how?

I don't disagree with you that it is desirable that all parents step up, but when they don't?

I think to claim unemployment benefits, you must have proof of contraception in place.

We are enabling people to have and raise children in the most awful, chaotic circumstances, because there are zero consequences any more.

I would get rid of the assumption which has become hard-wired into British society and mind sets that it is the state’s responsibility to pay for the costs of bringing up children. It isn’t. It’s the parents’ responsibility.

I would keep the two child benefit cap to ensure that people who live off the state continue to face the same choices & trade-offs as people who work for a living.

I would remove all taxpayer subsidies for the cost of childcare and use the money saved for tax cuts, targeting big increases in personal allowances to allow parents to keep more of what they earn. Then I would deregulate the chidcare sector to ensure that, while basic minimum standards are maintained, massive economies of scale & free competitive markets would reduce costs & increase customer choice.

If there was proper LA housing stock there'd be no need to ban private rentals. If you just ban them, where do all the people currently in them live?

That's the one thing that could make such a difference, and I'd support high taxation and increased government borrowing to achieve it. Unfortunately any candidate that proposes it would never get elected.

Why will you never own a house?

The biggest way to decrease childhood poverty is to encourage stable family formation, push people to take responsibility for their own lives and discourage irresponsible breeding.

That’s not possible though so I guess it’s an ever increasing tax take to have more and more taxpayer spending to tackle child poverty.