Families reported that attending Parent's Circle helped them gain perspective on their situation, feel supported, learn key developmental concepts, locate hospital and community resources, and optimize interactions with their fragile infant. Staff reported that the knowledge parents gained from Parent's Circle influenced their interactions and behaviors in the NICU.

The introduction of Universal Credit, a new social assistance benefit for working age people in the UK, constitutes radical welfare reform and entails a significant intensification and expansion of welfare conditionality. Numerically, women are disproportionately affected by the conditionality regime for main carers of children within Universal Credit. Under this new benefit, couples have to nominate as ‘responsible carer’ the person in the household primarily responsible for the care of dependent children. Lone parents are automatically designated as the ‘responsible carer’. The responsible carer is subject to varying levels of conditionality (depending on the youngest child’s age) and faces benefit sanctions for non-compliance. To investigate the gendered implications of conditionality for responsible carers within Universal Credit, a small-scale qualitative study was carried out. The study’s findings show that the conditionality within Universal Credit devalues unpaid childcare and subjects mothers to conflicting responsibilities of mandatory work-related requirements and unpaid childcare.

The surge in prices over recent months has created a cost of living crisis that is exacerbating insecurity and harming people's mental health. The Food Foundation warned recently that more than two million adults in the UK have gone without food for a day because of the rising cost of living. This is not inevitable. Yes, when prices rise faster than earnings, this puts additional financial and emotional strain on households. But in contexts where social security is more generous, this strain is minimised. Indeed, in some places, this strain has been entirely removed. 1

The benefit cap and the two-child limit were both introduced with the aim of promoting fairness. However, women are disproportionately affected by both of these polices. This article presents new empirical evidence that demonstrates the gendered impacts of the benefit cap and the two-child limit on mothers. It shows that the benefit cap and the two-child limit ignore the gendered reasons for women’s disproportionate subjection to the policies, devalue unpaid care, fail to recognise gendered barriers to paid work and ultimately, harm women in a wide range of ways, particularly by further entrenching them in poverty.