Women and Children's Poverty: Perspectives from the 4 Nations

Child poverty has increased by 700,000 since the implementation of austerity measures in 2010 by the previous Governments. After winning the 2024 General Election, the new Prime Minister announced the creation of a new Ministerial Child Poverty Taskforce which would oversee the development and implementation of a new Child Poverty Strategy. The aim of the strategy is to improve children’s lives by addressing the root causes of poverty in the long-term.

However, child poverty does not happen in a vacuum. Women organisations and campaigners have repeatedly drawn attention to the links between women and children’s poverty, calling for gender-responsive policies to tackle this issue.

What measures should the new UK-wide strategy include? Have devolved governments shown greater gender responsiveness in the development of their child poverty plans, and what can we learn from each nation’s approach to tackling child poverty?

Join the Women's Budget Groups for a cross-nation discussion on the gendered nature of child poverty in the UK and the actions needed to tackle it at a devolved and UK level.

An excellent panel will offer a variety of perspectives:

• Dr Victoria Winckler: Dr Victoria Winckler has been the Director of the Bevan Foundation since 2002, establishing it as Wales’ most influential think-tank. Victoria is a leading contributor to public policy in Wales, developing ideas and taking them forward to implementation. She proved that extending eligibility for free school meals was affordable, demonstrated how devolved grants and allowances could be streamlined into a single system, and persuaded the Welsh Government to boost emergency cash funds for people in crisis. She previously developed the proposals that secured EU Objective 1 status for West Wales and the Valleys, galvanised action for the south Wales valleys, and triggered plans for new, devolved taxes. Victoria frequently gives expert evidence to Senedd Committees, speaks at conferences and comments in the media. Victoria previously held roles in local government and academia, and been a board member of several organisations.
• Anna Ritchie Allan: Anna Ritchie Allan is Executive Director of Close the Gap, Scotland’s policy advocacy organisation working on women’s labour market participation. She participates in a range of strategic working groups related to women and work, and is Co-chair of the First Minister’s National Advisory Council on Women and Girls. She has significant governance experience as a trustee in the third sector, and her background is in research, labour rights, and violence against women.
• Alison Garnham has been Chief Executive of the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) since September 2010. Prior to this she was the CEO of Daycare Trust and was previously, for nine years, the Director of Policy at One Parent Families (now Gingerbread). In her early career, she worked for women’s organisations and local voluntary sector organisations and then for nearly ten years as a welfare rights adviser in Citizens Advice Bureaux. She joined CPAG in 1989 (for the first time) where she co-authored a number of publications about the Child Support Act. She has subsequently written about childcare, lone parenthood and child poverty. Before joining One Parent Families she was Senior Lecturer in Social Policy at the University of North London (now London Metropolitan University) where she has also been an Honorary Research Fellow. She was for nine years a member of the Social Security Advisory Committee and is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences.
• Becca Bor is the development coordinator at the Northern Ireland Anti-Poverty Network (NIAPN). She sits on the working group of the Cliff Edge Coalition, convenes the Child Poverty Alliance, and represents NIAPN at the Equality Coalition. For more information about NIAPN: www.niapn.org and she can be contacted at: becca@niapn.org