To think adding more child benefits is a pointless and futile policy?

[MelissaExplainsItAll]

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/feb/26/parents-under-fives-could-be-exempted-two-child-benefit-cap-uk

I think child poverty would be better relieved in ways other than giving the parents more cash.

For example:

• better funded breakfast and after school clubs
• better funded nursery hours (banning top up charges)
• expansion of free school meals
• better school funding
• direct funding of school holiday clubs

AIBU?

The issue seems to be schemes are launched but not funded properly.
Like the nursery hours... top ups are banned, but its sort of accepted they happen because the funding doesn't match running costs.
Or these new breakfast clubs... they are paying for the food but not the staff.

Sure there are some feckless folk around but people generally know their own needs better than governments and just giving them cash is usually the best way of ensuring those needs are met.

Case in point - most of your suggestions would only at best indirectly help someone needing to provide for an under 5 year old and even then only if they are funded and function adequately which these sorts of things seldom do.

So basically you feel that poor children should be cared for and fed away from their parents as much as possible?

No. I think that’s an appalling idea.

I agree with you OP.

Plus we're broke as a country. Lovely to saddle all those kids with higher taxes and generational debt by spending more than we have.

This.

There’s an underlying nastiness that somehow poorer parents are worse parents. That is not necessarily true.

I was chatting to someone who thinks only children of working parents should get nursery places and the poor kids should stay at home and not experience it.

Poverty is a lack of money. So more money is the solution

The problem is the mega rich not paying their tax

Not the poorest, who are having their kids pushed further in the gutter

Yes. You are being vvvv U

Better to give money so they can pay the bills and buy clothes for the children.

Removing the cap for under 5’s won’t work. As soon as they hit 5 the cap kicks in and the money which they are used to getting will be removed. Surely that will just kick the can down the road and the same issue will arise.

You realise that a huge poverty factor is disability. households with a disabled family member are far more likely to be poor. If parents cannot work due to I'll health, then better funded after school care/holiday clubs will be of no use to them. Likewise, if you have a disabled child. Children with SEN are routinely excluded from breakfast/after school clubs, holiday clubs don't take them. Thus parents are forced out of work.

I don't think you understand drivers of poverty.

It should be both. We've got a looming population crisis, we need to spend whatever it takes to squeeze maximum productivity out of the next generations. That means well housed, well fed and well educated no matter the cost.

I'm against the cap in general however, the problem with scrapping it for under 5's would be that people might have more children under a false sense of security and not realise the impact of losing that money when they reach 5.

I think instead of lifting cap from two children to three and then limiting it to two again once the youngest hits age 5, the child element for the two children should be raised to an amount that is realistic to raising a child. Currently £287 per child how about raising that to £400 per child? £113 a month increase means homes could be heated better and children will be feed the required amount.

I don’t think this is the argument at all? I saw the point as being that if these things are free & available- after school clubs, breakfast clubs, school holiday clubs- then parents are able to work more hours or take on more jobs rather than being restricted to working part time/term time to facilitate drop off/pick ups/childcare, therefore those families are better off?

*For example:

• better funded breakfast and after school clubs
• better funded nursery hours (banning top up charges)
• expansion of free school meals
• better school funding
• direct funding of school holiday clubs*

The vast majority of those won't help parents with children under 5, as they are all school-related. School preschools here are vastly over subscribed.

"Better funded nursery hours" is very vague. Banning top up charges allegedly happened last week, but even if it did, is just going to mean that nurseries increase their fees. Mine had already announced that it was putting up prices on April 1st to cover the national insurance and minimum wage increases; and we already pay just under £500 a month for two days a week for my three-year-old, and that's with funded hours. We're not in London, either.

This is one of the more expensive nurseries in the town, but we've been on the waiting list for six others for over 18 months. School preschools are overrun, even though the hours are tough for some people.

My concern with the new policy proposal is that my mum kept having kids so she kept receiving maximum benefits. She would have another whenever the funding started to drop. She loved babies, and felt incentivised to keep having them. She had pretty severe mental health issues, but I have childhood friends who don't and have gone down that same path... A hard-cut off at five risks encouraging people to just keep having a younger child and pushing that problem further away.

I agree

Where are they getting the hours from?

When are they supposed to see their children, which even the Government itself says is best for children?

Who is deciding who is worthy of a space? There's never going to be enough space for everyone. Schools in most areas are oversubscribed and all the new housing developments are only making that worse...

Parents who both work have to do this anyway, I and everyone I know uses and pays for breakfast clubs / after school clubs. We don't all have the luxury of free money to feed kids at home with. We need to work full time to afford to feed and clothe kids

I think getting tougher on unpaid child maintenance would have a better effect.

Yeah. My family is in poverty because the LA can't provide a school place for my disabled child, nor is there suitable childcare options. so I cannot work and we are poor. More child benefits for my youngest isn't going to make a difference. What we need is the same opportunities given to non disabled people. Failing that high enough benefits to pay off my mortgage which I'm unable to do.

Also a carer state pension that is higher than normal state pension to save me from poverty in my old age once I'm too old to care for my son and too old to work as like the mortgage I'm not paying into a pension and it worries me massively

Some parents make me laugh when they say i dont claim or never claimed any benefits i only get child benefit well thats still a benefit.
I believe if you have children you should pay for them and child benefit child tax credit should not exist.

Child maintenance isn't counted in respect to benefits.

I think if other taxpayers subsidising these policies felt flush with cash then their would be less concern.

At the moment many working parents pay a lot of tax and get little for it and when taxes are going up to pay for someone else's children it feels like you take the food off one person's plate and put it on someone else's plate.

The answer clearly isn't taxing higher earners more because we know they are leaving the UK because of high taxes (and law and order, failing NHS) and that reduces the overall amount of tax raised.

No - but it would make more of a lasting impact for children living in poverty for them to be supported and provided for by their absent parent throughout their entire childhood instead of a being bunged a few extra quid by the government until they are 5.