This week, Child Poverty Action Group launched a new campaign - 'Make Child Benefit Count' - to both mark the sixtieth anniversary of child benefit and its predecessor family allowances (which were first paid to parents on 6 August 1946) and to call for child benefit to be increased and paid at the same rate for all children.
The ‘Make Child Benefit Count’ campaign calls on the Government to increase child benefit and ensure that younger children get the same rate as the oldest child. At the moment, child benefit is worth £17.45 per week for the first child, but just £11.70 per week for second and subsequent children.
And the campaign is being backed by a coalition of organisations including Children in Wales, the TUC, Save the Children, Citizens Advice, Barnardo’s, Family Welfare Association, NCH, Contact a Family and End Child Poverty.
Children in Wales are also supporting the campaign by encouraging attendees to complete the campaign postcard at their stand at this weeks National Eisteddfod in Swansea.
For more information and to find out what you can do as individuals to support the campaign (People can send an electronic postcard to the Chancellor Gordon Brown), please visit the campaign’s website or Child Poverty Action Group