A mix of continuing cuts to social security and public services, squeezed wages and rising living costs mean that 2017 is set to be another tumultuous year for many. But there are particular socio-economic problems – each growing for years – that could reach a tipping point in the coming months. Some will be exacerbated by new government policies this year, others by inaction. Here are five to watch out for:

In-work poverty

After years of the government peddling the line that being a “hardworking family” will help you to get through tough times, it’s a grim irony that 2017 looks set to be the year of in-work poverty, where you can have a job but still have to go to a food bank to eat or even sleep on the street. Workers are battling squeezed wages and precarious contracts (we now know that those on zero-hours contracts are on average £1,000 a year worse-off than employees), while those who need benefits to top up poverty wages will see themselves enduring the problem-plagued universal credit and possibly benefit sanctions.

At the same time living costs will go up. Rents continue to rise – taking an impossible chunk of income – while just this week there were warnings that 2017 will bring more rises in the price of fuel, food and other essentials, and the news that credit card borrowing has hit a level not seen since the pre-2008 crash. There have been warnings over the scandal of in-work poverty for years – the majority of new housing benefit claimants in 2010 and 2011 had a job – and yet only meagre solutions such as the so-called national living wage have been offered.

Social care

In the closing weeks of 2016 social care emerged less as a new problem than the problem the government could no longer ignore, as an ageing population endures 15-minute care slots and young disabled adults are left unable to dress or get out of the house. For 2017-18 alone the social care system has an estimated funding gap of £1.9bn.

The £900m top-up frantically proposed in December – made up of a council tax rise and diverting cash from the new homes bonus fund – suggests a quick patch-up job at best. One in three councils may actually lose money as a result of the government’s changes and these are councils already on their knees after cuts of almost £5bn to social care over the past four years. Worse, because of differing property prices, the council tax precept is worth more in affluent parts of the country – so the areas where need is greatest will actually get the least help.

As 2017 progresses, the big social care problems may actually be ones barely mentioned right now: the pressure that the introduction of the national living wage is adding to care costs, the reduction in choice of care for disabled people, or the mass shortage of care workers that post-Brexit migration restrictions may cause.

Out-of-work sickness benefit cuts

The Conservative MP Heidi Allen (pictured visiting the Calais refugee camp) has condemned her government’s attacks on disabled benefits. Photograph: Graeme Robertson/The Guardian

Contrary to claims that Tory welfare cuts are over (rather, no new ones are scheduled), this year will deliver one of the most controversial benefit cuts to date: removing £30 a week from many disabled and chronically ill people who are unable to work.

From April, new claimants put in the work-related activity group (Wrag) of employment and support allowance – disabled or chronically sick people judged as too ill to work – will receive the same as recipients of jobseeker’s allowance. As I’ve said from the start, a policy that treats someone unable to work for two years during a multiple sclerosis relapse in the same way as a healthy unemployed person out of work for a few month, is simply going to force severely ill and disabled people to survive long term on a short-term benefit.

Even Theresa May’s own side has noticed. In November several Conservatives joined calls to postpone the cut, with the MP Heidi Allen saying that there was “no other piece of legislation or change which I have seen more regret about on my side”.

To get a picture of how grim this cut actually is, almost two-thirds of Wrag-classified people say they already don’t have enough to live on, with nearly a third struggling to afford food. And far from encouraging disabled people off sickness benefits, a crossbench review last year found the cut will actually reduce their ability to take steps into work .

Temporary accommodation

With three street sleepers found dead in December and the number of homeless people rocketing to a quarter of a million in England alone, the homelessness crisis should become increasingly hard to ignore in 2017. But in a climate of shrinking social housing and frequent private evictions, it’s the growing trend of temporary accommodation – families stuck in hostels, women’s refuges, private accommodation, B&Bs – that stands out.

In the third quarter of 2016, almost 75,000 households, including 120,000 children, were recorded as living in temporary housing. That’s an increase of 9% on the same period in 2015. Almost 32,000 more children are now enduring this than in the same quarter of 2010.

The impact can be devastating. Families are often being left to live in what’s essentially squalor: bloodstains, broken windows and even a lack of a bed or a bathroom. Others are housed hours away from their schools and health services: local authorities, it emerged last year, are unlawfully resettling homeless families miles from their local area. It is also hugely costly. Councils have spent £3.5bn on temporary accommodation over the past five years. Almost two-thirds of that is in London.

Child poverty

Like a Dickensian parody, the Conservatives saw in Christmas by abolishing the child poverty unit. After seeing its staffing halved in three years, the unit has now been subsumed into the Department for Work and Pensions. This couldn’t be worse timing. The Institute for Fiscal Studies projects a 50% increase in child poverty by 2020 – with 2017 seeing several policies set to push more children to breaking point.

In April, the Conservatives’ two-child policy will come into force, limiting tax credits and universal credit to the first two children in a household. This year will also see the full rollout of the extended benefit cap, affecting 320,000 children. Add to this universal credit and benefit freezes, as well as increasingly squeezed wages, and 2017 will be particularly tough for Britain’s poorest children.