StepChange welcomes Child Poverty Strategy, but urges Government to consider cost of living support

^{4 December 2025}

StepChange Debt Charity welcomes publication of the Government’s long awaited Child Poverty Strategy, which aims to lift 550,000 children out of poverty by 2030.

The Government’s commitment to end the two-child limit will have a real impact in reducing poverty, but to be effective, the strategy must take steps to bring down the cost of essentials for working age families.

Peter Tutton, Director of Policy, Research and Public Affairs, at StepChange, said:

"Families facing poverty often become trapped in problem debt - compounding hardship, causing serious health problems and holding back children's development. We’ve welcomed the opportunity to feed into the Child Poverty Strategy and evidence how parents, and especially single parents, face heightened vulnerability to debt. At StepChange, more than one in four of our debt advice clients are single parents (27%), compared to just one in ten UK households.

"The removal of the two-child limit is a decisive move that will ease pressure on hundreds of thousands of families, whilst the recent announcement to expand and make the Help to Save scheme permanent will support parents in building rainy-day savings.

"Families with low incomes face exceptional pressure from rising living costs. For this Strategy to deliver real impact, the Government must tackle the cost of essentials – through targeted energy support and by boosting incomes for working-age families, including uprating benefits such as Local Housing Allowance and council tax support."