Panorama: Britain’s Child Health Crisis
The BBC recently aired the Panorama documentary ‘Britain’s Child Health Crisis’. This documentary focused upon the causes of the child health crisis and searched for solutions, whilst highlighting the strong correlation between child poverty and health inequalities.
Throughout the documentary the impact of poverty upon children, families and communities was emphasised through the sharing of people’s real-life experiences. Additionally, by featuring experts across numerous disciplines the detrimental impact which poverty has upon children’s health, wellbeing and educational outcomes was exemplified.
Professor Sir Michael G. Marmot, the leading global figure on the social determinants of health and how they lead to health inequalities, contributed to the documentary noting that the two-child limit has placed half a million children into poverty.
The two-child limit is a policy which impacts families who are in receipt of the child element of Universal Credit (UC). This limit means that children born after 6 April 2017 do not qualify for the child element of UC, resulting in a loss of £3,455 per child per year for the third or subsequent children born after this date (third or additional children may now only qualify in a small number of exceptional cases). Specifically for children living in households across Northern Ireland, one in ten children are affected by the two-child limit. Furthermore, this causes significant disadvantage and detriments to children and families in Northern Ireland as the average family is size is larger with 21.4% of families having three or more children, compared to 14.7% in the UK.
Professor Marmot further noted that social conditions in early childhood predict the health of children and that the investment in social conditions for early child development leads to greater productivity, and that in the most deprived areas the outcomes are worse for children. These findings are further supported by the Academy of Medical Sciences 2024, noting that children in families with the lowest incomes are more likely to experience poor health by the time they are seventeen.
The impact of child poverty and issues raised in this documentary echo the challenges and difficulties faced by the approximate 109,000 children living in poverty across Northern Ireland. As convenor of the Cliff Edge Coalition, the Law Centre continues to call for the removal of the two-child limit which is contributing to the rising levels of child poverty.
For further information on the Law Centre’s Social Security work, including the work of the Cliff Edge Coalition, please see here.
To watch the Panorama documentary, please click here to go to BBC website.