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Persistent poverty or persistent poor parental mental health affects over four in ten children in the UK today, according to a new study.

The combination of both affects one in ten children and is strongly associated with adverse child outcomes, particularly poor child mental health.

The study was part of the Overcoming Adverse Childhood Experiences (ORACLE) project funded by the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR). The main aim of the project is to understand the lived experiences of children, young people, and family members, and wider structural determinants, of risks and assets around parental mental health problems, substance misuse and intimate partner abuse.

ORACLE is led by Professor Ingrid Wolfe (King’s College London), Professor Eileen Kaner (Newcastle University) and Professor David Taylor-Robinson (University of Liverpool). Professor Eileen Kaner is also Director of the NIHR ARC North East and North Cumbria. ORACLE is a NIHR ARC North East and North Cumbria Adopted Project.

Analysis was carried out by researchers from the University of Liverpool, Newcastle University, King’s College London and Stockholm University, using longitudinal data from the UK Millennium Cohort study on 11564 children followed to age 14 years.

Family adversities included parent-reported domestic violence and abuse, poor mental health and frequent alcohol use. Six trajectories of poverty and family adversity for children were identified: Low poverty and family adversity (43.2% of those included in analysis), persistent parental alcohol use (7.7%), persistent domestic violence and abuse (3.4%), persistent poor parental mental health (11.1%), persistent poverty (22.6%) and persistent poverty and poor parental mental health (11.1%).

Compared with children exposed to low poverty and adversity, children in the persistent adversity trajectory groups experienced worse outcomes with those exposed to persistent poor parental mental health and poverty were particularly at increased risk of socioemotional behavioural problems, cognitive disability, drug experimentation and obesity.

Policy recommendations from the research include:

• Increasing child benefits and the child support element in universal credit uplift, reversing changes to the welfare system that have led to rising child poverty
• Re-investing in support services and children’s preventive services such as children’s centres
• Improving access to mental health services for families.

This study was funded by The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Policy Research Programme, NIHR Applied Research Collaboration South London (ARC South London) at King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and the Medical Research Council (MRC).

The study was published in The Lancet Regional Health, November 2021.

Read the full paper: Impact of poverty and family adversity on adolescent health· A multi-trajectory analysis using the UK Millennium Cohort Study