MPs at the UK Parliament's Welsh Affairs Committee opened an inquiry on Wednesday into ending child poverty in Wales, a country that has spent two decades perfecting the art of doing nothing about it. Wales holds the dubious honour of the highest child poverty rate of any UK nation, with 32% of children living in relative poverty after housing costs, according to the latest official statistics. A child is considered in relative poverty if their household income falls below 60% of the UK median - a threshold that apparently remains stubbornly unmet for roughly one in three Welsh children, as it has for 20 years.

Sarah Ruscoe, a single mum from Barry who is out of work due to a health condition, offered MPs and the BBC a vivid illustration of what that statistic looks like in practice. "I was sleeping on the sofa, she had a bed that was propped up on books," she said of her daughter Sabrina, 11. "One of the legs had fallen off completely." Ruscoe, a food bank user, said she had worried the bed would collapse in the night, describing her financial situation as "dire" and noting that "every year seems to be getting worse." The charity Action for Children eventually paid for a new cabin bunk and mattress, which Ruscoe said made a "massive difference" - "It's a little nest now. We decorated it. Nobody else has slept in it."

Three years ago, Ruscoe had been trying to replace Sabrina's "ropey" second- or third-hand bed. "It was getting a bit distressing," she said. "I was having difficulty finding somewhere where I could afford one, and also not having the greatest credit rating in the world meant that you had to pay like two or three times what you would have done if you'd just gone into a shop and bought it outright." She described the grim arithmetic of benefits: "Up until that point it was worry and trying to work out, maybe if I didn't pay this bill maybe I could save some money here, what could I go without, trying to work out which company had the smallest APR on an item that I could afford. There's not that much out there, especially when they hear you're on benefits."

Ruscoe, who used to work in a job centre, said her chronic pain condition fibromyalgia had left her fatigued and in pain, and when it flared up, unable to move. "I don't work due to my disabilities so it's a case of benefits, and that's how we survive, and this year seems to be worse than last year. Every year seems to be getting worse. Last year I managed to put money away over the course of the year for Christmas and this year I haven't been able to at all. Everything has gone up. There's only so much penny pinching you can do on everything and then realise that every penny you've pinched is still not covering all your bills and your outgoings." She warned that anyone could find themselves in a crisis because of ill-health or an unexpected life event. Action for Children also helped the family one year with a gift card for local supermarkets before Christmas.

The committee heard from Laurie Ryall, Wales director at Action for Children, who said the absence of a single point of access for support often left families feeling overwhelmed. "They don't always know what they're entitled to or where to go, it's confusing, it's a minefield," Ryall said. Mabli Jones from the Bevan Foundation think tank told MPs that although child poverty had remained at the same level for two decades, "what's been happening under the surface is that poverty has got deeper." She noted that 47% of people in poverty in Wales live in "very deep poverty" - an income at or below 40% of the median. "Families who are experiencing that kind of poverty are likely to be going without many of the basics."

A UK government spokesperson said: "We're determined to turn the tide on poverty, and our landmark child poverty strategy will lift 550,000 children out of poverty in the final year of this parliament - the largest reduction in child poverty since records began." They said abolishing the two-child limit would benefit an estimated 69,000 children in Wales, and that a temporary cut to electricity bills and raising the National Living Wage had contributed to a fall in food bank usage. A Welsh government spokesperson said it had "inherited a damning legacy of stubbornly high levels of child poverty" and pointed to the first phase of its offer of 12.5 hours of free childcare to all two-year-olds and extended free school meals. They also said the government was seeking assurance from the UK government that a proposed pilot scheme of £10 a week per child to support low-income families would not affect benefit payments, adding: "We continue to call on the UK government to use all the levers at its disposal, including those on welfare, to make a lasting difference to families in Wales."

Meanwhile, the committee's inquiry continues, presumably while someone somewhere drafts a strategy to address the fact that a bed propped up on books is still considered a housing solution in 2024.