Empty plates and cold homes: What it’s like to grow up in poverty in 2024

A warm home and food on the table are essential for a child’s health, wellbeing and development, yet across the UK, many families can't afford to heat their homes or put nutritious meals on the table.

This report focusses on how poverty affects families’ ability to afford food and fuel, with important insight from 116 Barnardo’s practitioners who support children, young people, and families in need. We’re looking at these aspects of poverty because, for too many children, life this autumn and winter will mean going to school hungry and returning to a cold home. That means they'll be at a higher risk of developing illnesses including respiratory conditions, suffering from poor mental health, and feeling too hungry or tired to concentrate at school. 

Our practitioners have told us that parents are skipping meals to make sure their children can eat while families live in cold and damp homes with black mould because of the unaffordable cost of keeping warm and fed. With energy bills set to rise by 10% in October 2024 and food prices now 27% higher than two years ago, the coming months are likely to be very challenging for many families. 

What does food and fuel poverty look like?

For this report YouGov conducted new polling that showed many parents are continuing to struggle with the constantly high cost of living, and more parents seem to be struggling now compared with two years ago.

Through our research, we've found:

• 1 in 4 parents (25%) struggled to provide sufficient food for their child in the last 12 months, up from 1 in 5 parents (20%) in October 2022. We estimate this is affecting 3.4 million children. 

• 1 in 3 parents (33%) have cut back on energy bills (e.g. gas, water and electric) to save money, up 2% from February 2023.  

• 8% of parents made use of a local food bank, up 2% from February 2023. We estimate there are over 1 million children in families in this situation.

What needs to change

We need urgent action to address the deep-rooted causes of child poverty. We warmly welcome the new UK Government’s commitment to a Child Poverty Strategy, and the formation of a new Ministerial Taskforce designed to tackle child poverty.

We recommend that this work includes early action to: 

1. End the ‘sibling penalty’: end the two-child limit in the social security system which affects children who have two or more brothers or sisters.  

2. Save our local safety net: develop a long-term scheme and funding settlement for local crisis support after the Household Support Fund ends in March 2025.   

3. Implement an Essentials Guarantee: implement an Essentials Guarantee that would introduce a protected minimum floor in Universal Credit to ensure families facing hardship don't go without essentials like food and fuel. 

4. Extend free school meals: extend free school meals to all primary school children in England.  

5. Address holiday hunger: set out plans to address holiday hunger after the Holiday Activities and Food Programme ends in March 2025, including efforts to increase uptake and extend eligibility.