The UK Government’s new Child Poverty Strategy, released at the end of 2025, marks a long-awaited shift in approach. After years of rising child poverty, the commitment to lift an estimated 550,000 children out of poverty by 2030, alongside wider support for 7.1 million children, represents one of the most significant policy interventions in over a decade.

Taken together with the announced removal of the two-child limit, these measures are a major and long-overdue victory for families and campaigners. Expanding free school meals, improving energy support, and increasing childcare assistance will make a real difference to families struggling with the cost of living. The UK Government’s engagement with people with lived experience is also welcome and essential for shaping policies that respond to children’s realities.

But while this strategy signals a shift in tone, it falls short of what is required under the UK’s international human rights obligations, particularly under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC).

A strategy without a rights framework

Child poverty is not simply an economic or productivity challenge. It is a human rights violation. Children have the right to an adequate standard of living now, not simply a promise of future economic contribution.

Yet the Government’s strategy does not explicitly recognise economic, social and cultural rights, nor children’s rights. This omission matters. Without a clear rights-based framework, progress remains vulnerable to political cycles, fiscal pressures, and future shifts in priorities.

Earlier this year, the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights issued strongly worded concluding observations on the UK, urging the Government to take systematic, coordinated action to address child poverty, homelessness, and food insecurity. The Committee specifically called for:

• clear targets and timelines,
• robust monitoring and reporting,
• participatory mechanisms,
• and adequate resourcing.

While the new strategy reflects greater awareness of the scale of deprivation, it does not yet provide the accountability mechanisms required to meet these obligations.

Temporary accommodation: long overdue focus on one of the deepest forms of poverty

One of the most significant and long overdue areas is its focus on temporary accommodation, where over 172,000 children in England alone are currently living .

For years, the severe and often dangerous conditions in temporary accommodation have been highlighted by families, frontline organisations, and researchers. Children living in temporary accommodation experience acute violations of their rights: overcrowding, unsafe conditions, constant relocation, distances from school and support networks, and serious health harms.

The measures announced, while positive, must be understood as the bare minimum required to address a crisis that has been escalating for years. Temporary accommodation has become a semi-permanent feature of the housing landscape, with thousands of children spending not weeks but years in highly unsuitable environments. Until the Government tackles the structural drivers, including the shortage of genuinely affordable housing and chronic local authority funding gaps, children will continue entering unsafe housing faster than reforms can protect them.

What needs to happen next

This strategy shows that political change is possible. But meeting the UK’s human rights obligations requires more than discrete policy measures.

At a minimum, the Government should:

• explicitly ground its child poverty strategy in ICESCR and CRC obligations;
• set out clear benchmarks, timelines, and indicators for progress;
• establish transparent monitoring and accountability mechanisms;
• ensure sustained and adequate funding to support long-term structural change.

At Just Fair, we welcome this strategy as a turning point. But without embedding economic, social and cultural rights at its core, it risks remaining only a partial response to a deep and ongoing crisis.

Civil society has a vital role to play in ensuring that the UK Government turns these commitments into real, rights-based change for children. We encourage organisations and individuals to join the UK ESCR Network, share evidence, and use human rights tools to hold the UK Government accountable. Together, we can help ensure every child in the UK grows up with dignity, security, and the opportunity to flourish.

Background image by Jon Hanlan