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Some children are living in "Dickensian" levels of poverty, England's children's commissioner has said.
Dame Rachel de Souza said children have described living in homes with rats, seeing bacon as a luxury food and not having a place to wash.
She insisted the government should scrap the two-child benefit cap, which prevents most families from claiming means-tested benefits for any third or additional children born after April 2017.
A spokesperson for the government said it was "determined to bring down child poverty" and it had announced a £1bn package to improve crisis support, including funding to ensure poorest children do not go hungry outside term time.
The Labour government had been considering lifting the limit, but at the weekend the education secretary refused to commit to doing so.
Bridget Phillipson said ministers were "looking at every lever" to lift children out of poverty - but that spending decisions have now been made "harder" after the government axed other benefit changes which would have saved billions.
Speaking on BBC Breakfast on Tuesday, England's children's commissioner Dame Rachel said: "I have been doing this job for four years but I was shocked by how much worse things have got."
"It really is Dickensian and there are a huge number of children now who have dropped below what anyone of us would think is reasonable," she said.
"The children who have got no food to eat, the children who can't wash their clothes so they are going to school dirty and if they're lucky the school are washing their clothes for them.
"I had one child tell me about his shame because he couldn't have his friends round because in the night rats came and bit his face."
Dame Rachel said many people are going in and out of having to use universal credit "because of poor rates of pay in their work and because of sickness"
She was speaking as her office published a report that had been commissioned by the government. The report - which looks at children's experiences of poverty - is aimed at helping the government as it works on a child poverty strategy.
The government's child poverty taskforce is looking at the case for removing the cap, among other policy options.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies think tank estimates that axing the two child benefit cap would cost the government about £3.4bn a year and would lift 500,000 children out of relative poverty.
About 1.6 million children live in households affected by the cap, according to the Department for Work and Pensions.
"I've always said the two child limit should be lifted", said Dame Rachel. "That's a big structural thing and the reason why is it would immediately lift half a million children out of poverty.
"Nobody is choosing to have children so they can get money from the state. That is absolutely not what's happening here."
A spokesperson for the government also said it has expanded free breakfast clubs, it is investing £39bn in social and affordable housing, increasing the national minimum wage and supporting 700,000 of the poorest families by introducing a fair repayment rate on Universal Credit deductions.
"As part of our plan for change, the Child Poverty Taskforce will publish an ambitious strategy later this year to ensure we deliver fully-funded measures that tackle the structural and root causes of child poverty across the country," the statement added.
