Children are our future. Yet it feels as though we’re letting them rot.

Mould. Rats. Hunger. These are some of the shocking things children are living with every single day. We welcome that the “almost Dickensian levels of poverty” have been raised with the publication of the Children’s Commissioner’s report and resulting headlines.

No one should be able to turn their backs otherwise, parenting will continue to be too hard, for too many.

Every day, we at Little Village hear what these levels of deprivation mean to families across London: children sleeping in cold mouldy rooms, families forced to ration nappies and water down baby formula, parents scraping by on corn flakes and rice. 

Children can’t wait. The government must take bold action in its Child Poverty Strategy – baby steps simply won’t cut it. The Best Start Family Hubs are a great start, but the two-child limit has to go as a minimum to lift hundreds of thousands of children immediately out of poverty.  

Children are our future; they should be our priority. Read the full report here: “Growing up in a low-income family: Children’s experiences”

Other news:

Why we’re now seeing “Baby Banks being banked on far too much.“