‘I’m really feeling the squeeze’: single mothers on the living costs crisis

Steph Owens works for the NHS and says she had to use universal credit and food banks to make ends meet. Photograph: Christian Sinibaldi/The Guardian

Half of all children in lone-parent families are now living in relative poverty, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, whose findings are published today by the Guardian. After a decade of cuts to welfare, these families – most of them headed by women – have been left without the buffer they need to manage the impact of soaring inflation. Often ignored, and sometimes deliberately targeted by government policy, single mothers have a big role in raising raising the next generation, caring for just over 3m children in Britain today. They represent a quarter of all families with dependent children.

Here, four mothers talk about the daily challenge of feeding and caring for their children.