How would you tackle child poverty and improve outcomes?

[Cindyyyy]

I would back:

• free basic school meals for all from 3 (extras can be paid for) of healthy, veg-based, minimally-processed meals
• investment into school-based pre-school, to be free for all from age 3
• increase school funding massively, pay rises for teachers and nursery staff, investment and subsidies into training
• increase number of SEN schools and in-school SEN provision, as well as PRUs
• subsidised holiday clubs for all parents working full time
• extend SureStart, increase reviews by health visitors. If a child isn’t meeting milestones, earlier intervention and increased checks
• expand apprenticeships

You?

I think it's fantastic that schools have moved to digital money systems for school dinners. It makes neglect easier to spot. When i was sent into school with lunch money it wasnt picked up on. There's also an awareness of period poverty now, so free sanitary products in school and public library bathrooms. So no more sock/toilet paper padding.

All children in temporary accommodation
Would go to the top of the housing list for council houses .
It upsets me so much ,that we prioritise able males above children who are dependants ,for a home .
I know of a family who the eldest is sitting gces and have have spent most of their life in temporary accommodation..no kitchen,no garden,no bedroom.
Makes me sick

If employers have to pay lots more it will change the employment landscape. Companies are going bankrupt and job vacancies are falling, especially for graduates. We can see that making employment more expensive harms growth. So changing benefits would be a tax on employment and that will end in unemployment. Be careful what you wish for. A start would be no benefits if not working 30 hours. No few hours to get all the benefits and dc getting full loans for university and bursaries too because people won’t work full time.

Do we? Surely they're on different lists for a different kind of accomodation?

Everyone in temporary accommodation is prioritised afaik. Family accomodation is in short supply because of years of right to buy

Families with children are 100% higher priority than lone males or just couples.

Problem is the family often needs a 3 bed house/flat. The lone male or couple only need a bedsit or 1 bed may more of those than empty 3 bed council properties and they won’t knowingly put you somewhere that makes you overcrowded.

Have a listen to Gary’s Economics he’s on fb it’s really interesting. He talks about this a lot.

I completely agree with this. We have to be very targeted about where we offer financial support otherwise you will end up subsidising people that simply don't need it. It creates a weird dependency on the state and places them as some extortionately expensive middle man where lots of families will be paying more tax to fund their own children's FSMs or holiday clubs.

Universal basic income.

Free university

No benefit cap

Higher taxes

Specialised services for people on a low income

Umm. Gary Stevenson has been outed as a fraud and a charlatan.

Basically free everything, take money from those that work hard and give it to those that don't?

Yep. Take it all. Snatch it and leave them in the skip. (Evil laugh)..

How would a party get elected with a manifesto to raise taxes to pay for all this?

I like your ideas OP.
I would add a massive council house building programme to house working people.

By mobilising the poor and non-voters to vote in their best interests.

@Googoogrrfff Why do people think they can do nothing and everyone else will pay? Maintenance for university was means tested throughout most of the last century! It’s not up to the poorest workers to pay for the 37% of dc who want to go to university and increasingly find they aren’t earning much (or at all) afterwards. Increase partition and someone has to pay. At the moment the students owe the government. Around £240 billion. So no, it cannot be free and written off - we need a good proportion paid back.

What services for people on a low income? How low? The ones who won’t work more hours because they lose benefits?

No -they’ll just bugger off.

And I hate to disillusion you, but there just aren’t that many ‘super-rich’.

What there are plenty of are hard-working, law-abiding, responsible middle and working class people who are always in any government’s sights when it comes to tax-grabs. And they can only be pushed so far before resentment kicks in.

And how do you propose to keep hard -working taxpayers’ noses to the grindstone paying for all this free stuff? Guns? Tanks?

Just pointing out the policies are idealistic and far fetched. I think the welfare state should exist but only for the truely needed. Should be limited so that it's a last resort.

It’s almost funny - the people who chew their little pencils thinking up lists of lovely free things from the fairies without any knowledge or idea of how to cost them.

Bless.

I would limit benefits, and replace with
a voucher system for school Uniforms , sports wear and appropriate clothing
vouchers for food
a pass system for free/ reduced access for low income kids to leisure activities, sports, cinema etc
re invest in youth services and clubs

Well spotted! Clever you. 👏

Now these are good ideas!

• increase school funding massively, pay rises for teachers and nursery staff, investment and subsidies into training

Teachers start on a basic salary of around £30k. I think there are more deserving recipients of scarce funding than they are.

I think the really challenging issue is getting spending to needy children and teenagers - not just giving it to hopeless, deadbeat parents to spend on themselves. How do you accomplish that?

i think vouchers are one possibility (but not foolproof, as mentioned above with the mother selling them for her own benefit) and definitely prioritise youth services. Youth clubs etc are always money well spent-spent.

A minimum amount should be calculated as “cost to raise a child”. The non-resident parent should be expected to cover their proportion of this. If they are unable to, the government pays it, and it accumulates as a loan which affects credit ratings more heavily than other loans - for example, credit cards, mortgages and car finance would be refused. Only those with a disability that prevents them from working would be exempt from repaying the loan.

Companies should be prevented from paying wages where the highest wage is more than a set multiple of the lowest wage. The highest salary can’t be increased beyond that hourly rate multiplied by full time hours (e.g 40 hours per week). The multiple could be higher for small companies, reduced for medium and again for large companies, to help owner managed businesses get started.

Dividends should be banned for medium and large companies any of their staff are paid below a set living wage (an actual living wage, not minimum wage which was renamed).

Once the right people are fairly paying their share, the government can look at stepping in to provide support where it’s needed, instead of taking on the role of absent fathers or companies who pay the CEO or shareholders before their staff