Families and challenges to social welfare policies: key themes in the case law

Dr Jed Meers, Lecturer in Law, University of York

Families have been hit hard by reductions made in the name of “welfare reform”. The Welfare Reform Act 2012 and the Welfare Reform and Work Act 2015 have had a disproportionate impact on low-income families with children and single parent families in particular. This article seeks to provide an overview of key themes that have arisen from the case law challenging these policies, with a particular focus on challenges involving children and families. I argue there are three key themes that arise from these challenges: (i) the pervasiveness of the “manifestly without reasonable foundation” bar in human rights based challenges, (ii) the challenge of drawing conduits between the discrimination at issue and the UNCRC, and (iii) the reliance on discretionary forms of mitigation. I will deal with each in turn.

The full article will be published in the November issue of Family Law. 

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Read the full article here.