Unravelling household costs: summary of Citizens Advice engagement work for the Child Poverty Strategy
Household costs are key to understanding the rise in hardship we have seen over the last few years. Around half the people we help with debt advice are in a negative budget, where their essential costs outstrip their essentials. Many have been pushed into the red by the rise in key costs like rent, energy and food.
In 2024, the government announced plans to develop a Child Poverty Strategy . As part of the taskforce's engagement work, we were asked by the government's Child Poverty Unit to lead on the theme of household costs.
We held a series of evidence-gathering roundtable discussions, themed around the household costs that make up the largest or fastest growing costs in the budgets of families we support. These sessions brought together frontline organisations, national charities, think tanks and academics, industry, and government officials to discuss the role household costs play in driving child poverty, and how the Child Poverty Strategy could best reduce or alleviate these costs.
From these sessions, we have put together a set of findings and recommendations for the Child Poverty Strategy, set out in this report.
We have also drawn on our unique data to get a clear picture of the role of costs in contributing to hardship and poverty, especially for households with children, set out in this data pack.