Cost of living: Low pay forces family to use water with cereal

Low pay and high costs have forced a family to use water with their breakfast cereal instead of milk, a poverty charity has said.

Living on the breadline "is worse now than it has ever been" according to Cherrie Bija, chief executive of Faith in Families.

The Welsh government said tackling poverty was a priority.

But Wales' Children's Commissioner said the government's poverty strategy needs "a lot more work to be meaningful".

The Welsh government scrapped its target to eradicate child poverty by 2020 in 2016.

Ms Bija told BBC Politics Wales that one child who was helped with a small grant had grown out of his only pair of shoes and had been having water on his cereal because his mother's pay at a supermarket struggled to cover food bills.

"We bought the essentials for the cupboard and the little boy was jumping and excited," she said.

"He had new shoes and we bought some milk and fruit.

"When the play worker asked the little boy why he was excited, thinking it was going to be the shoes, he said it was because he was going to have milk on his cornflakes the next day.

"He'd been having water on his breakfast before school," she said.

Ms Bija said it was commonplace to hear such stories.

"People just haven't got enough money to live on these days.

"They're not being paid enough.

"They haven't got enough benefits coming in and it just needs to change."

The charity, based in Swansea and Brecon, helps children with breakfast clubs, after school groups, affordable childcare and mental health support.

"Just think of all of those thousands of children every day, right now, going to school or going out into our communities, hungry and cold and tired and anxious," Ms Bija said.

"What do you think their adulthoods are going to look like?

"We are just storing up a massive problem. A massive, massive health problem. A massive wellbeing issue, an anger problem.

"We have to do something about it now for all of our children."

Children are considered to be living in poverty if their household earns less than 60% of the median UK household income.

The Welsh government's consultation on its child poverty strategy said 31% of children in Wales were living in poverty - about 190,000 under the age of 19.

It said the biggest driver of child poverty was low wages, low benefits and high costs which were the responsibility of the UK government in Westminster.

But it said tackling child poverty was a priority for it, and policies like free school meals, expanding free childcare, and other initiatives were making a difference.

The Children's Commissioner for Wales, Rocio Cifuentes, however, said the strategy needs a lot more work.

"I think it needs more detail, more targets, more actions, more deliverables, more timescales," she said.

"It just seems too broad, really, to be a useful tool to aid measuring and monitoring how well we are doing towards tackling the huge problem of child poverty."

The UK government said it was "providing record financial support" worth about £3,300 per household.

"We have raised benefits by 10.1%, made an unprecedented increase to the National Living Wage and are giving an extra £50 million to help people in Wales with essential costs," it added.