Strategies to End Child Poverty: Historical Perspectives: Written evidence submitted by Heather Ellis, David Hitchcock, and Michael Lambert (CPS0042)

This evidence submission focuses on five inquiry questions. It uses research on free school meals both historically and today, on poor children and poor families enmeshed in the state care system in the 20th century, and on longer durée assessments of the ambition to end child poverty in previous UK welfare systems. It makes recommendations in its concluding remarks, and advocates for clear, national, and regional, child poverty reduction targets, and for a holistic approach to child poverty which considers inclusivity, participation, community, and structural barriers in addition to traditional measures like income thresholds. As historians whose work focuses on questions of poverty in both the modern and premodern periods of British history, we thought the inquiry’s sessions might benefit from historical perspectives on questions of ambition, target-setting, and around specific amelioration polices such as free school meals.