Overview
- The plan extends upfront childcare support to Universal Credit claimants returning from parental leave and allows childcare help for all children in UC families.
- An £8m programme across 20 councils aims to stop families staying in B&Bs beyond six weeks, with a new legal duty to alert schools, health visitors and GPs when a child is placed in temporary accommodation.
- The government will work with the NHS to prevent newborns being discharged to B&Bs, and it will adopt CMA-inspired measures to help parents access cheaper baby formula and use loyalty points or vouchers to buy it.
- Officials estimate scrapping the two‑child limit will lift about 450,000 children out of poverty at a cost of roughly £3bn, with the wider package totalling 550,000 by 2030.
- Charities welcome the cap’s repeal but criticise the strategy for lacking long‑term, binding targets and deeper housing and welfare reforms, noting that around 4.45 million children are in poverty now and close to four million are still expected to be so by the end of the decade.