As the end of each month approaches, dread sets in. Emma John, a single parent with four daughters, knows that her money will run out and she will be forced to visit a food bank to feed her children.
“By the end of the month, there’s just no money left,” Ms John tells i. “And then it’s trying to find a way to feed the kids for the rest of the month. We have to rely on food banks or ask family for help.
“It’s upsetting because I don’t want to have to do that. I’ve always worked and I’ve always managed my money well but I’m in the situation now where no matter how well I manage my money, it just doesn’t go far enough.”
The Johns are one of thousands in the UK adversely affected by the two-child benefit cap which restricts child tax credit and universal credit to a family’s first two children. It applies to any child born after 6 April, 2017 – currently about 1.6 million children, according to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).
Ms John, 37, of Pembrokeshire in Wales, says the policy is “hugely unfair” and “feels like a kick in the teeth”.
“It feels like society doesn’t value my children; like my family is wrong because I have more than two children. Children don’t choose their birth order or what family they’re born into, so why should they have to suffer or start life at a disadvantage for something that’s beyond their control?
“They’re all equal members of society. They’re all going to grow up and hopefully work and contribute. But why do the younger two not deserve the same investment as children? I don’t think families should be made to feel less than because of the two-child limit.”
The cap has been found to be a key driver of child poverty in the UK, and research by the End Child Poverty Coalition revealed that 50 per cent of those affected are single parent families like the Johns.
“I never intended to be a single parent,” Ms John says, “but I’m the one that’s here looking after the children 24/7, on my own, and sacrificing everything for the children, and yet it feels like there’s a stigma attached to that. Single parent families need more support, whereas actually often times they’re the ones being penalised.”
‘I want my children to feel they are worth a nice life’
The cap has emerged as the first fault-line among the newly elected members of the Labour government, with Sir Keir Starmer suspending seven MPs on Tuesday for voting for an SNP motion calling for its abolition.
Many Labour MPs would like to see the policy scrapped and view it as incompatible with Labour’s stated aims of tackling child deprivation, given that lifting it would take about 500,000 children out of poverty.
Since coming to power, the Prime Minister and his Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, have stuck firmly to their line that they cannot commit to waving the cap without knowing how the estimated cost of doing so – £3.4bn annually – will be paid for.
Instead, the Government has launched a taskforce to formulate a child poverty strategy.
If it was scrapped, Ms John would receive about £6,910 extra a year – £3,455 for each of her two youngest children.
The difference, she says, would be monumental. “That would be the difference between stressing and running out of money each month and not being able to buy food, to knowing that I can actually feed my children well all through the month. And also for them not to feel self conscious that we can’t afford things their friends can afford.”
Ms John’s daughters are one, two, seven and 12 years old. Her eldest is beginning to notice the disparity with her friends, she says. Last week, she kept her at home from school because all of her class mates were on a school trip that she couldn’t afford to send her on.
“I try not to let them know,” she says. “Sometimes they ask for things and I know I can’t afford it but I’ll make another excuse, like I don’t like the colour or we don’t want to do that, it sounds boring. My eldest is realising we can’t afford certain things. She tries to hide trips from me or she won’t tell me about things that cost money because she knows it’s a strain.
“I’m concerned because I don’t want them to feel like they’re not worth the same as their friends. I want them to feel they do deserve a nice life. They don’t need the best of everything but I want them to know they are worth little treats or days out.”
‘We get treated poorly because we’re on benefits’
Janet Arinaitwe is a single mother with three children aged five, 12 and 15, living in Battersea, London. Her youngest is autistic and non-verbal but she struggles to afford the things needed for his development like sensory toys or special gymnastic classes alongside the struggles to meet her family’s basic needs.
“On top of that, we’re living in a two-bedroom flat which is overcrowded, so me, Eden and Skye sleep on the sofa and the house is infested with mold and mice,” she tells i.
“When we’re sleeping on the sofa, you can see the mice crawling on the side and when we’re sleeping we can hear them under our pillows. They eat our food and go into the children’s drawers. The kids are scared and I’m terrified of mice as well.”
The family are in a council property and on a long waiting list to be rehoused. More money would mean Ms Arinaitwe could invest in redecorating and be able to buy suitable furniture. Eden’s special needs means she needs locks on the doors. “This house is not safe for Eden,” she says. “He ran away – he’s been brought back by police twice in the past month because the house is not safe for him.”
The cap makes her feel “very poor”, she says. “We’re poor anyway and nobody really cares about that. We get treated poorly because we’re on benefits. And it’s not like I woke up one day and said to myself, ‘I want to be on benefits’. Before my HIV diagnosis and bipolar diagnosis, I had ambition. I had goals for my life. It’s not like I was just sitting at home and I was a bum.
“People think people on benefits are taking the government’s money when realistically we have just enough to live on. You can’t even save. I would like to get things like life insurance for my protection and for my kids.
“It really stresses me out, and that’s why I keep having relapses because of the condition that we’re living in. I cry every single day. I get panic attacks. I try to keep it together because I don’t want to show the kids.”
Ruth Talbot, founder of Single Parent Rights, said: “Despite making up a minority of families, single parents represent 52 per cent of those impacted by the policy and 25 per cent of those impacted are single parents with children under three years. This kind of inequality towards single parents needs to end.
“We know single parentism pushes more single parents into poverty than other family types. That’s why it’s critical that this policy is removed as a matter of urgency and as a first step towards ensuring single parent families can thrive, not merely survive.”