The number of families using ‘Baby Banks’ for essential items like nappies and formula has jumped by more than 50% since 2021, figures shared with Channel 4 News have revealed.
At its peak, the cost-of-living crisis plunged 300 thousand children into absolute poverty in a single year.
Food bank use exploded in that time – alongside Baby Banks – which give parents emergency food, nappies, equipment and clothing. Figures shared with Channel 4 News show 200 thousand children needed their services in the last year alone – a number the Government says it finds ‘unacceptable’.
The number of families using ‘Baby Banks’ for essential items like nappies and formula has jumped by more than 50% since 2021, figures shared with Channel 4 News have revealed.
Nearly 200,000 thousand babies and children have been supported in the last year alone, according to the Baby Bank Alliance, with charities warning the cost of living is driving more and more families into poverty.
One Baby Bank in Bridgend, South Wales, says some of their clients will not be able to eat all weekend while it’s closed, while others have been forced to leave their babies without nappies for more than 24 hours.
“Sometimes they’ll crumble before you,” says Tracey Morgan. “I honestly don’t know how parents manage now. I really do wonder, you know, how far parents will go to get items for their children.”
Tracey says she’s seen a significant rise in the number of couples in work, some holding down more than one job, who can’t make ends meet.
“It shouldn’t have to be that way… I often wonder if we’re actually moving backwards rather than actually moving forwards as we should.”
The government told me today that “mass dependence on baby banks is unacceptable”, and it was developing an ambitious child poverty strategy. But what that will entail is, as yet, unknown.
This week the prime minister faced his first backbench rebellion, suspending seven MPs from the Labour party for voting in favour of scrapping the two-child benefit cap, a policy introduced by Theresa May in 2017. Under the cap, universal credit or child tax credits can be claimed for just two children, stretching the budgets of those with more.
The party ruled out overturning the policy during the election campaign, saying it was too expensive, and while privately they hope to get rid of it at some point, they worry doing it right away would jettison their claims to fiscal responsibility.
And although the roots of child poverty are many and varied, charities say this is one lever that, when pulled, would lift nearly half a million children out of poverty overnight. The Resolution Foundation told me that while poverty levels have flatlined for most demographics, there has been a rise in the number of large families slipping below the poverty line.
The marked rise in Baby Bank use coincides with another alarming figure. In 2022-23, 300,000 more children fell below the absolute poverty line, bringing the total number of children living under it to 3.6 million, a significant jump in just a year.
For a couple with two children, that means living on an income of £448 a week after housing costs.
We know that rents are sky-rocketing, and for hundreds of thousands, high interest rates have more than doubled their mortgage payments overnight.
Inflation hit a 40-year high in 2022, outstripping wages, with food inflation peaking at 19% a year later.
Prohibitively expensive childcare also means many parents are unable to get back into work. So on all fronts, families’ household budgets have been hammered.
In Bridgend this week I spoke to Carys, mum to 18-month-old Deacon. A cleaner at a local hospital, her maternity pay left her with just over £500 a month.
Her partner is in construction and works full time away from home five days a week, but the rising cost of rent, energy bills and essentials like food and nappies has outstripped their wages.
“I was a bit anxious at first coming in, because obviously you think, ‘it’s a charity, I’m on maternity pay and my partner’s working’. You feel like you shouldn’t have to go to charities to help feed your family.”
Carys says she was so relieved when she finally plucked up the courage to go to the Baby Bank that she cried.
“Even if it’s just like nappies – they’re £10 – it doesn’t seem like a lot of money to other people but to people like me £10 is a lot of money.
“When I was a kid, money was tight, but we could still do things like go on holiday. I don’t even think about that now, everything is just too expensive.”