Across the UK, tens of thousands of children are growing up in temporary accommodation, including hotels, hostels and Bed and Breakfasts (B&Bs). These spaces were never meant for long-term living. They were never designed with children in mind. At LAWA, children are supported in safe spaces within our refuges, but we know that many others are placed in settings that are not only unsuitable but also unsafe.
Housing is not just a women’s issue. It is a children’s rights issue. Drawing on data, frontline knowledge and the WAHA (Women Against Homelessness and Abuse) project, we ask a simple question: Why are so many children still being exposed to living like this?
As of December 2024, 165,510 children were living in temporary accommodation in England. The government does not publish data on the number of young children in temporary accommodation, despite evidence of the serious impact this has on child development and wellbeing.
However, a live data dashboard by Inside Housing, based on Freedom of Information requests, estimated that 39,300 households across England, Scotland and Wales were living in temporary accommodation with children under five. Of those, 2,300 households in England were placed in B&Bs.
Temporary housing placements are meant to last no longer than six weeks, particularly when they involve B&Bs. Yet the vast majority of families exceed that limit, many for months on end. Since 2019, the Shared Health Foundation has recorded 74 child deaths where temporary accommodation was a contributing factor. Fifty-eight of those children never reached their first birthday.
This is not a data gap. It is a political choice.
The UK government does not require local authorities to report how many babies or toddlers are in temporary housing. According to Inside Housing, one in four councils does not collect or share data on under-fives.
If there is no data, there is no visibility, and when children are invisible to the system, their specific needs are ignored. A three-month-old baby is treated just like a sixteen-year-old. Children with asthma sleep in rooms with black mould. Toddlers lose speech and developmental progress. Neurodivergent children are overstimulated, neglected or retraumatised.
And all of this happens without language access, without cultural safety and without any guarantee of rights, particularly for migrant and racialised families.
As the Domestic Abuse Commissioner’s 2025 report, “Victims in their own right?”, shows, Black, minoritised and migrant children are routinely excluded from systems of protection. Their lives are shaped by immigration controls, racism and neglectful housing policy.
In parallel, a 2025 study by King’s College London, Autistica and the Shared Health Foundation launched a call for evidence to understand how temporary housing is affecting neurodivergent children, a population still largely unrecognised in housing policy.
A growing body of evidence shows that we can protect children from the dangers of temporary accommodation. Across the UK, there are powerful examples of local councils and services stepping up — and showing what’s possible with the right priorities.
In Greenwich, the number of under-fives in B&Bs was cut by 91% in just three months. The council coordinated across departments to prioritise families for safer move-on housing, increased access to private rentals, and purchased local properties for use as temporary accommodation. Crucially, this wasn’t the result of new legislation; it was a local decision to treat unsafe housing as unacceptable for children.
In an article published last month, Isabel Kaner, Policy and Campaigns Officer at the Shared Health Foundation, highlighted other pockets of good practice identified by the charity: schools working hand-in-hand with councils to support families facing homelessness; accommodation providers stocking cots for babies; and play areas being created where none exist. These simple, practical measures make an immediate difference to children’s safety and wellbeing.
But these examples are the exception, not the rule.
A report by Shared Health Foundation, “Children Living in Temporary Accommodation: An Absolute Scandal”, revealed 13 violations of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child – from poor-quality housing and shared facilities with single adults, to barriers to accessing healthcare, education, and basic safeguarding.
This is a national emergency. As the government prepares its new child poverty and homelessness strategies, children living in temporary accommodation must be at the heart of policymaking.
Our WAHA Roadmap lays out clear steps for local authorities. The solutions are already in front of us. The question is: will councils and government act?
LAWA offers the only by and for Latin American refuge in the UK, and one of the few services built to support children as survivors in their own right, not just as dependents. We offer therapeutic and trauma-informed play support, legal and welfare advocacy, multilingual and culturally rooted services, and housing pathways that centre healing rather than survival.
We do not ask children to adapt to violence, instability or silence. We meet them with safety, structure, language and care.
We know what we are doing. We know what works. And we believe our approach should inform how systems respond to the children most at risk.
We hope to keep doing this work on our terms, guided by the knowledge and voices of our communities.
Our WAHA project documents the frontline experience of Black, migrant and Latin American women and children facing housing injustice. It calls for structural change and funding to match the scale of the crisis.
Click here to find out more about our WAHA initiatives.