World Children’s Day: Letter to children from Minister for Children and Families
To mark World Children’s Day, Minister for Children and Families Will Quince wrote to the children of England and we are pleased he recognised the findings of The Big Ask. We publish the letter here. Dear all children and young people in England, I write this letter to you as the Minister for Children and […]
GPC spend over £500: 2021 – 2022
We publish details of all spending over £500 using a government procurement card (GPC) on a quarterly basis. 1 April 2021 – 30 June 2021 Transaction date Transaction amount Entity Details 17/06/2021 £804.89 OCC Specialist web hosting for our vulnerability app 1 July 2021 – 30 September 2021 Transaction date Transaction amount Entity Details 01/07/2021 […]
Anti-Bullying Week and The Big Ask
Today marks the beginning of Anti-Bullying Week in England and Wales. Our largest-ever survey of children The Big Ask showed us how deeply this generation of children care about issues of equality and fair treatment in their friendships, and within their communities. In our survey, 1 in 5 children selected ‘everyone being treated fairly’ as […]
Guide to COP26 for children and slides for schools
A guide for children and slides for schools sharing what COP26 is and what children told us in The Big Ask survey about climate change and the environment.
The Big Ask: The environment and COP26
Tens of thousands of politicians, journalists, activists and industry representatives have descended upon Glasgow this week, as the city plays host to COP26. Otherwise known as the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP26 is the biggest climate change event since the 2015 Paris Agreement. Countries will set out what they intend to do to […]
Help at Hand: The issues facing care leavers this year
National Care Leavers’ Week is a time to reflect on how we can ensure that every young person who leaves care has the support they need to fulfil their potential. Responses to The Big Ask have shown that children with care experience have the same ambitions as all young people. The difference is they cannot […]
The Big Ask and the Autumn Budget and Spending Review
In all our work with young people and policy-makers this year, this Autumn Budget and Spending Review has felt critical – a major opportunity to make meaningful commitments which put children at the heart of the recovery from the pandemic. In that light, it is heartening to be able to welcome a number of announcements […]
The Big Ask: Children in care and care leavers
This National Care Leavers Week, we want to take the opportunity to say thank you to the thousands of children in care who answered our Big Ask survey, and told us about their hopes and fears for the future. We are extremely proud that the Big Ask had an unprecedented response from children in care […]
The Big Ask: Education
The Covid pandemic has ushered in a new appreciation of the role of schools in our society and a recognition of the fantastic work teachers have done. During lockdown, they rallied to help families in need, to provide quality remote education and to support the wellbeing of their pupils. Parents grappled with the task of […]
Conversations with care leavers: the importance of trusting relationships
Next week is National Care Leavers Week, a vital time for us to focus on care leavers, and how we support them in transitioning from care into adult life. Next week I’ll be focusing on this, and my team’s work to bring about these changes. Ahead of that, I wanted to focus on what we […]
Evidence
Over half a million children responded to The Big Ask survey. The Big Answer report shares their responses and our answer. Here we share supporting evidence.
The Big Ask: Family
This year, the Children’s Commissioner’s Office conducted the largest ever survey of children in England. A record-breaking half a million responded – the voice of a generation. The ‘Big Answer’, published this September, is our first response to this outpouring of children’s voices as we emerge from the Covid pandemic. We were overwhelmed by the […]
Archived Content
Expenses and hospitality for 2020-21
The following are expenses and hospitality expenditure between 1 April 2020 – 31 March 2021 for staff members of our senior management team, audit and risk committee and advisory board. 1 April – 30 June Nil 1 July – 30 September Nil 1 October – 31 December Nil
Child poverty: the crisis we can’t keep ignoring
Child poverty will continue to rise during this Parliament unless the Government commits to a bold, broad response. We are one of the most prosperous nations yet the number of children living in poverty is shocking and it is a cause for national shame. Child poverty has long been a fundamental problem facing Britain, and […]
Politicians must take child poverty out of the ‘too difficult box’ and come up with a big, bold plan to fix it
Anne Longfield, the Children’s Commissioner for England, is today (Thursday) publishing a call from a cross-party collection of politicians and campaigners calling for urgent action to tackle the blight of child poverty. The set of short essays includes contributions from Robert Halfon MP, chair of the Education Select Committee, DWP Select Committee Chair Stephen Timms […]
Child ‘food poverty’ is just one symptom of a wider injustice: poverty
To truly solve a problem, you must first properly define it. And the problem of child food poverty in the UK today is not down to a lack of food. It is instead that too many families do not have enough income to afford to put food on the table. Child ‘food poverty’ is just […]
Work should free more families from poverty: here’s how we achieve it
One of our great national successes over the last couple of decades has been the sustained rise in employment among parents, especially lone parents and mothers in couples. But rising employment has been overtaken by rising in-work poverty. Work should free families from poverty, but the majority of children in poverty now live in working […]
We need a national plan to eradicate child poverty
In 1999, I set out the government’s path to end child poverty through a 20-year mission. While ambitious, long-term commitments help focus minds, that pledge made clear that we believed that tolerating child poverty was indefensible and it should – and could – be tackled head on. In the years that followed, Labour governments took […]
Tackling the impact of child poverty
The harsh reality of child and family poverty has always had a devastating impact on the wellbeing and life chances of many children in this country. The recent pandemic has turned what was already a crisis into a tsunami of need. In the words of the 2020 ADCS discussion paper, Building a country that works […]
Lockdown, poverty and the disadvantage gap
The events over the last year have not only had a deep and disastrous effect on the lives of disadvantaged young people but have also thrown a new light on the disturbing disparities that already existed. We know that the loss of learning during lockdown disproportionately affects children from disadvantaged groups. The digital divide, with […]
How should policy support family incomes in the coronavirus crisis?
The coronavirus crisis has had a big impact on family finances. More than a quarter of adults saw their incomes fall during the initial lockdown period, and 23 per cent of adults still had lower income as the economy reopened (June-September) than before the crisis. And the longer-term impact of the pandemic, combined with the […]
Learning the lessons from previous recessions – focus on families
One of the small mercies of the Covid-19 pandemic has been how little it has affected children. But our national response has closed the schools, services, and relationships on which they often rely. Vulnerability has been compounded, the poor hardest hit, and new problems have emerged. In the months ahead, to name but a few […]
