Rosie Mears

Child Poverty Action Group

I’m a Welfare Rights Adviser at CPAG. I live in East London with my partner. I feel fortunate that my main complaints about lockdown are around not being able to see family and friends rather than anything more serious. On this project, I’m working with my colleague Kelly-Marie on the Early Warning System, which is a database of submissions of evidence from welfare rights advisers. I hope that this project provides an up-to-date picture of people’s varied experiences so that we can document the need for amendments to our social security system to protect as many people as possible. While a lot of the challenges are new, other gaps in our social security system were there well before the pandemic but now their effects are being felt more severely and by more people.