Skip to content
National Energy Action
Recite me
Donate

National Energy Action’s Child Fuel Poverty Campaign: What have we achieved so far?

A movement grounded in action, partnership and systems change 

Our child fuel poverty campaign is not a traditional awareness campaign. While raising the profile of the issue and influencing policy remain essential, what distinguishes this work is its focus on embedding practical action into everyday services, designing new approaches that have children and families at their heart, and building a movement across sectors. 

We are working simultaneously at three levels: 

  • Awareness, influence and policy change: shaping the national and devolved policy agenda 
  • Practice: embedding fuel poverty support into frontline services 
  • Innovation: designing and testing new, scalable models centred on children 

Together, this creates a joined-up approach that moves beyond advocacy alone, ensuring that families experience real, tangible change. 

What we have achieved so far 

Embedding support in communities and everyday settings

In regions such as the North East (and beyond) we are increasingly meeting families where they already are: in schools, community spaces, and trusted services. 

  • In the North East, our local school partnership has delivered KS2 educational workshops, equipping children with essential life skills around energy and healthy homes at an early age. 
  • This work extends beyond the classroom, with parent engagement through community hubs, including advice coffee mornings and planned drop-in sessions, ensuring families can access tailored, practical support. 
  • Our outreach via trusted local partners is helping to build confidence and trust, connecting families to energy and benefits advice they might not otherwise seek. 

This approach reflects a core principle of the campaign: normalising help-seeking and embedding support into trusted spaces, rather than expecting families to navigate complex systems alone. 

At the same time, insight from regional partners ensures that lived experience directly informs delivery and campaign priorities.

Two,Children,,A,Teenage,Boy,And,A,Little,Girl,,Listening

Reaching the frontline workforce at scale

A critical part of our approach is equipping professionals who already support families to identify and respond to fuel poverty. 

Through training programmes, we have reached a wide range of services that connect with children in need every day, including: 

  • Health visiting and school nursing teams 
  • Children’s therapies (speech, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, dietetics) 
  • Palliative care teams 
  • Early years and inclusion services 
  • Children’s centres and family support charities 

This work is complemented by partnerships with organisations such as Home Start, KIDS, and local authority services. 

By embedding knowledge and referral pathways into these roles, we are: 

  • Expanding our reach exponentially 
  • Positioning fuel poverty as a safeguarding and wellbeing issue 
  • Ensuring earlier identification and intervention for families 

This is a shift from stand-alone advice provision to a whole-system response, where fuel poverty becomes part of everyday professional practice. 

Child eating pasta

Driving policy change and national momentum

The campaign has successfully elevated child fuel poverty as a national priority and influenced key policy developments. 

  • Fuel Poverty Awareness Day mobilised over 1,000 stakeholders, generating widespread engagement and equipping partners with evidence and messaging to act. 
  • We have strengthened alignment between fuel poverty and child poverty strategies, ensuring that children are explicitly recognised in national policy frameworks. 
  • We have advocated for improvements to the Warm Home Discount to better support low-income families with children. 
  • We have influenced the development of regional strategies, including work with the North East Combined Authority to ensure child poverty is reflected in Warm Homes planning. 

In devolved contexts: 

  • In Wales, we have contributed to health-led approaches and policy discussions, including links with Health Boards, joint engagement with the CPG on Fuel Poverty and CPG on Housing in February along with the Chief Medical Officer for Wales. This has occurred alongside Senedd engagement that aligns with a growing focus on prevention in national and public health policy. 
  • In Northern Ireland, we have shaped the Warm Healthy Homes Strategy (2026036) and contributed to the design of future energy efficiency schemes targeting vulnerable households. We advocate for improved housing standards, including calling for the extension of Awaab’s Law protections to all rented homes in Northern Ireland. We are actively engaged with government on the development of a new Department for Communities energy efficiency scheme (Warm Healthy Homes Fund) which must deliver for low-income and vulnerable households, including households with children. In our response to the Executive’s draft Anti-Poverty Strategy, NEA NI joined many other organisations in highlighting its shortcomings and urging for the development of a final strategy that sets out a clear pathway to eradicate poverty in NI. 

 

Importantly, this policy work is not abstract. It is directly informed by frontline insight and designed to create practical change on the ground.

Integrating health and fuel poverty interventions

Our work increasingly recognises that cold homes are a health issue for children, not just an energy issue. 

Through programmes such as Warm Homes, Healthy Futures, we are: 

  • Supporting families to stay warm and well 
  • Reducing health impacts such as respiratory illness and anxiety 
  • Connecting households with wider health and community services 

We are also working with health partners to: 

  • Embed fuel poverty support into NHS and public health services 
  • Strengthen recognition of fuel poverty within child health pathways 
  • Promote preventative, early intervention approaches 

This integration is critical to shifting the system towards prevention rather than crisis response. 

Our Belfast Warm and Well Project helps local people struggling to keep their homes warm by offering advice and practical support.  Since the development of the Belfast WAW partnership network in Winter 2024, the project has provided practical and financial interventions to 1,874 vulnerable householders, of which 84% had dependent children. 

We have joined Cardiff and Vale UHB Steering Group, seeking to establish a ‘Warm Homes and Income Maximisation’ pilot to provide advice and assistance (via several third sector partners) directly to households identified because of health needs. 

Designing and testing new delivery models

Warm Start, Healthy Futures is a new pilot that brings together the core elements of the campaign into a practical, scalable model. It is designed to show how support can be embedded around children and families, rather than delivered through disconnected services. 

A child-centred, whole-system approach: 

The model integrates energy advice and support into trusted, everyday settings, including health services, schools, and community hubs, while building the confidence of frontline professionals to identify need and act early. This ensures support is proactive and preventative, not just crisis-led. 

Two delivery strands: 

  1. Community and health-based support
    Working through services such as maternity care, health visiting, GPs, and family hubs, families receive:
    • Tailored energy advice and income maximisation support 
    • Crisis assistance (e.g. funding and Winter Warmth Support Packs) 
    • Referrals for housing and longer-term solutions 

This strand focuses on reaching families at key life stages and addressing fuel poverty as a driver of poor child health. 

  1. Schools and education
    Schools act as hubs for prevention and engagement through:
    • Energy and healthy homes workshops for pupils 
    • Parent engagement and advice sessions 
    • Training for teachers and pastoral staff 

This builds awareness early, supports families, and helps identify hidden need while placing children at the centre of the solution. 

Building workforce capacity: 

The project will train 300 professionals across health, education, and community services, creating a multiplier effect by embedding knowledge and referral pathways into day-to-day roles. 

Delivering and scaling impact: 

The pilot will support 720 households and deliver 60 school sessions across high-need areas. Crucially, it is designed to test a model that can be scaled nationally, combining direct support with long-term systems change. 

What makes this campaign different

This work is distinctive because it: 

  • Moves beyond awareness to action. We are not only highlighting the issue, we are embedding solutions into the systems families rely on every day. 
  • Centres children within systems, not at the margins. Rather than treating children as an afterthought, we are designing services, policy, and delivery models around their needs and experiences. 
  • Builds a cross-sector movement. From schools and NHS services to community organisations and policymakers, this campaign is creating a shared responsibility and collective response. 
  • Combines immediate support with long-term change. We balance practical help for families now with system-level change that will prevent fuel poverty in the future. 

Looking ahead

The campaign is entering its next phase with: 

  • Stronger partnerships across health, education, and community sectors 
  • A growing evidence base linking fuel poverty and child outcomes 
  • A scalable delivery model in Warm Start, Healthy Futures 
  • Increased policy traction across national and regional government 

Together, this positions the campaign not just as a programme of work, but as a movement for change – one that is reshaping how we understand, respond to, and ultimately prevent child fuel poverty.