Written by If you would not condemn any child you know to a lifetime of avoidable poverty and deprivation – don’t allow it to happen to 90,000 UK children in your name
“Imagine a future where poverty is not a barrier to opportunity.
Where every child has the same chances in life. Where background has no bearing on future success.
Where every child starts the day ready to learn, having had a good breakfast and slept in a warm bed. Where families don’t have to worry constantly about how they will pay the bills or put food on the table.”
These are not our words they are written in the Foreword to the government’s Child Poverty Strategy, published in December 2025. Yet the very same government has proposed radical changes to routes to settlement in the UK.* Alongside affecting many adults working in our public services – these changes – if adopted – will doom up to 90,000 extra children to deep poverty in the UK according to research.
Independent analysis commissioned by the No Recourse to Public Funds (NRPF) Partnership and carried out by Landman Economics and the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) estimates that the Home Office’s proposed ‘earned settlement’ rules could prolong poverty for up to 90,000 children of migrant workers by 2029.
Let’s break this down:
When the Child poverty strategy states it wishes that – every child starts the day ready to learn, having had a good breakfast and slept in a warm bed. Where families don’t have to worry constantly about how they will pay the bills or put food on the table?
The government’s earned settlement proposals will mean that families on a route to settlement in this country will do exactly this – worry constantly about how they will pay bills or put food on the table. Why? If they claim universal credit or other benefits to ensure that they can keep their children out of poverty, with a bed to sleep in and starting the day ready to learn – they will be penalised with an extra 5 or 10 years of insecure immigration status. This does not only mean uncertainty – it will require families to pay visa and immigration fees for substantially longer periods. Our families have to decide whether to divert funds away from buying their children enough food, new shoes, or activities – simply in order to continue to live the life they have built for themselves. The lived experience of families supported by the Magpie Project alongside reports such as “A Punishing Process”: on experiences of people on the 10-year route to settlement” compiled by the GMIAU, show that long settlement routes increase the risk of housing insecurity and homelessness.
Meet Rachel – she is a single mum with a British child, struggling to survive and facing destitution – she has limited leave to remain on a pathway to indefinite leave. If she claims welfare benefits to feed her disabled child, and DLA to support his additional needs, she will risk adding 5 or probably 10 years to her settlement route (5 years if she claims for less than 12 months and 10 years if she claims for more than 12 months).
Rachel says ‘We are not asking for any special treatment we just want our children to have the same opportunities as every other one of their classmates.’
The option of getting help for your family now, or allowing your children to suffer in the hope that this will shorten their overall period in destitution is a hideous dilemma for mums to have to consider. The extra financial burden involved in a longer route to settlement create sums that are mind-boggling.
Meet Zainab, she is the mum in a family of four (two parents two children), they are on a 10 year route to settlement, claiming benefits as they are legally entitled to do. The total cost to the family of completing their 10 year route to settlement will be £58,732, plus around £3,000 or more in citizenship fees. Under the proposed 20-year or even 30-year routes to settlement. The cost will almost triple to over £150,000 over a family’s lifetime. Where can she find £150,000 simply to remain together and secure their future in the UK? That is an an extra £619 per month every month to afford these costs, let alone pay them up-front (not in monthly chunks).
Zainab says ‘I am terrified by the amount of money it will take for me to simply be able to bring my children up in the only home they have ever known. We are not asking for anything extra, we are simply asking that our children are not punished for being born it to a family that has moved here’.
A blight on a generation
Child poverty is not just a ‘now’ problem – it blights lives long in to the future. The government’s strategy understands this: Where every child has the same chances in life. Where background has no bearing on future success’? (Child Poverty Strategy).
What the earned settlement proposals mean for children who are born in to working families, born British, who have never lived anywhere else – is a childhood of going without, of not fitting in, of poor housing, and potentially poor health. These children – if subjected to this hardship will also find it more difficult to ‘integrate’ into UK life – a stated goal of our government – given that they will forever be ‘set apart’ by their insecure status and poverty.
My son said to me ‘mum is it true that we don’t belong here’ I didn’t know what to say – because the government is saying that he should act as if he belongs here – he should integrate – but they are also saying, in their actions and this proposal, that he does not belong as much as other children.’
Chantelle, a Magpie Mum of a 3,9, and 16 year old.
By linking parental earnings to settlement routes, the proposals will make the poor poorer while benefiting the rich- and again go directly against the stated aim that a child’s background has not bearing on their future success. In terms of the overall drive to reduce child poverty this makes no sense. As reports point out: the child of a banker earning over £125,140 will be subject to insecurity for only three years on a route to settlement and the child of a care worker will be potentially destitute for their whole childhood on a 15-year route
‘What do I do?’ A mum already on a 10 year route’ tells us. ‘I am heartbroken for my children – these proposals will mean that I can never give my children the life they need and deserve – no matter what I do’.
Make no mistake, the earned settlement proposals risk a generational impact on up to thousands and thousands of children – who could be born and raised in the UK in destitution, without opportunities, and without being able to thrive and reach their full potential.
But it is not too late: no routes for children and parents in this situation have been confirmed.
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