Library & training

Now in its 19th edition, this Big Book offers 500 pages of user-friendly practical information, tips, tools, tactics, health assessment forms (page by page guidance and tips), effective support letters, caselaw and example appeal submissions.

An essential resource to help make your own claims or support those for others, especially if living with mental health issues.

​New/Updated for 2021/22:​

​Benefit changes: revised and updated overview and charts covering recent pandemic and other changes and a new chapter on the HMRC Emergency Coronavirus Support Schemes.

​Personal Independence Payment: the latest on anti-mental health discrimination, change in assessments processes, case law, and a new approach starting in Scotland later in 2021

​Sickness benefits: Making sense of the sickness benefits scene - what is going and what stays; issues when swapping from income-related ESA to UC, how the ESA/UC Work Capability Assessment works with page by page guidance through an example form, how to effectively support and challenge claims and ESA changes in doing that.

​Universal Credit: now split into two. Part 1: a practical guide to how UC works, moving over to it, claiming, the UC sums, practical tips and pitfalls to avoid in surviving UC. Part 2: separates out more complex and problem areas into their own chapter alongside reports and calls for change.

The journal aims to stimulate debate about the nature, causes and consequences of child poverty in the UK, and potential solutions.

​Inside this issue:​

- Child poverty and policy in the US and the UK
- Hindrance or help? Social security and work
- Discretion, dignity and choice: free school meals

The Welfare Rights Bulletin is CPAG's journal of welfare benefits and tax credits law and practice. It is also an updating service for our Welfare Benefits and Tax Credits Handbook.

In this issue:

-NINos: law, policy and legal challenge
-UC and deductions: recent changes
-Revisiting the UC grace period
-Child disability payment in Scotland
-Universal credit for veterans with disabilities

This edition of CPAG’s flagship policy publication provides the clearest and most comprehensive picture of poverty in the UK today.

With four million children now living in poverty in the UK, and independent experts forecasting that figure is set to rise, the significant progress made at the turn of the millennium to eliminate child poverty is being reversed.

Based on the latest official figures, Poverty: the facts looks at why UK child poverty rises and falls.

It answers the following questions:

- What do we mean by poverty?
- How do we measure poverty?
- Who is at risk of poverty?
- Who is in poverty?
- How does the UK compare with other countries?
- What can we do about it?

Written by leading academics and policy analysts, Poverty: the facts is essential for anyone wanting to understand the policy and political debates around poverty, and is essential reading for academics, students, social workers, welfare rights workers, financial inclusion teams and the wider policy community.

This book by Rebecca O’Connell, Abigail Knight and Julia Brannen brings the latest research on food poverty together with the voices of children and young people experiencing food poverty first hand.

What are the social and family circumstances that leave children hungry and prevent them eating in socially acceptable ways? What part does school food play in the diets of children whose families are on low incomes?

Illustrated with photographs by young people and researchers, the book sheds light on the various dimensions of food poverty, including hunger, poor diets and social participation as well as families who are eating well despite having a low income. It asks who is responsible for making sure young people eat well and have access to adequate food for health and social participation, and includes recommendations from CPAG.

To reverse the recent increases in child poverty caused by cuts to working-age benefits and tax credits, the next government will need to increase tax revenue, argue the authors of the latest policy book from CPAG. Published to influence the thinking about the best way of doing this, the contributors explore our current tax system with its various direct and indirect taxes, and propose a strategy for reform.

This book brings together leading voices from academia and practice to discuss whether the government's new life chances agenda is meaningful. What does life chances mean? What can be done to improve them and how are children's life chances affected by poverty and deprivation? This year the government will publish its first ever life chances strategy. In this book, experts from research, policy and practice discuss the implications of the shift to 'life chances' as a frame for social policy, set out measures to improve children's life chances from perspectives including health, housing, families, early years, education and social mobility, and explain why we can't aspire to improving life chances unless we take action to reduce poverty.

The Welfare Rights Bulletin is CPAG's journal of welfare benefits and tax credits law and practice. It is also an updating service for our Welfare Benefits and Tax Credits Handbook.

In this issue:

-Coronavirus and benefits from April
-Work capability assessments, delays and coronavirus
-Universally ineffective?
-The new transitional SDP element

Written for claimants and their advisors, CPAG’s annually updated Welfare Benefits and Tax Credits Handbook is the definitive guide to the UK’s social security system.

This new edition provides comprehensive information on your entitlement to benefits in 2021/22. It includes the latest on universal credit and legacy benefits as well as the impacts of the ending of the UK’s transition period from the EU (31/12/2020). The latest rules, including on migrating to universal credit, work-related responsibilities and changes to the right to reside in the UK are covered in detail. The edition also covers the continuing expansion of the Scottish social security system, with further details provided on young carer grants, child payments and child disability payments.

Tactical guidance and examples are included throughout to help you navigate an increasingly complex social security system. The Handbook is also fully indexed and cross-referenced to law, regulations and official guidance as well as to court, tribunal and judicial decisions.

Twenty-one years ago, Tony Blair made a promise to end child poverty to by 2020. In 2010, political parties of all stripes agreed binding targets. But rather than seeing the end of child poverty, in 2020 more than four million children live below the poverty line. This book looks at what has been achieved since the pledge to end child poverty was made, as well as considering what went wrong and the lessons that can be learned from both the highs and the lows of the past twenty years. It examines how the challenge of ending child poverty has changed over this period, and outlines a new ambitious plan to end child poverty for good.

In 2012, CPAG published a collection of essays titled 'Ending child poverty by 2020 - progress made and lessons learned'. This book completes the story to the end of the decade, bringing together a range of expert contributions from fields including health, education, housing, early years, social security, race, taxation and the lived experience of low income. This wide-ranging collection helps us understand why we are where we are, examines the impact of public policy during the austerity years and the possible impacts of Brexit, and offers fresh proposals for what an effective child poverty strategy 2020 should look like.