A young woman with pink-streaked hair and a nose piercing, Georgia Sullivan, holds a white sign that reads, “4.3 million children in poverty isn’t inevitable,” featuring the Action for Children logo. CREDIT: Simon Williams, March 2025.
Georgia’s campaign called on the UK government to take action to prevent more children falling into poverty by the end of the decade.
The Campaign
In March 2025, Action for Children and Georgia Sullivan launched the Paying the Price campaign, calling on the UK government to significantly invest in social security to reduce child poverty, beginning with removing the two-child limit and the benefit cap. A group of young campaigners and Georgia, who all had experience of growing up in poverty, led the campaign.
A candid photo of a young woman with pink hair, Georgia Sullivan, smiling while hugging another person at an event; a campaign poster titled “Paying the price of child poverty” is visible in the background. CREDIT: Simon Williams, March 2025.
The heart of our campaign has been bringing humanity to statistics and reality to headlines that too often stigmatise and dismiss the hardship endured by families experiencing poverty as personal failure, rather than that of an unjust, broken system. These historic reforms are a triumph of persistence, vulnerability and courage shown by the extraordinarily passionate community of campaigners and policy experts, who’ve proven the power of collective voice. It has been true privilege to learn and grow alongside my peers and the policy team at Action for Children – a journey I hope future campaigners feel enabled and empowered to take.”
Georgia Sullivan
The Change
The Future
Georgia says that, given the policy wins, the Paying the Price campaign has come to an end. ”Though of course, we must all call on the UK Government to remove the benefit cap to bring down child poverty levels further,” she said. “We also need to hold the government to account to ensure that the changes promised in the Child Poverty Strategy become reality, without delay. To do so, we must all collectively advocate for the Government to continue to seek out and listen to the voices of people with lived experiences of child and family poverty – and not just those who are ‘easiest’ to listen to.”
Who else was involved?
Louise Fitt, Aaron Cunningham, Charlie Edwards, Freya Pulham-Binch, Chan Cathline, Action for Children’s influencing team, Scott Compton, Freya Trevor-Harris, Emma Burke, Rachel Allison, Alice Woudhuysen, Kate Brewster, End Child Poverty coalition, parent groups, and more.
