Dispatches, child poverty

[dalmatianmad]

I cant find a thread for this? Found it really difficult to watch. I lived on a poor council estate growing up so didn't think it would effect me as much as it did. Poor little girl having to try and understand her mums MH and carry the burden of knowing they couldn't have the hearing on because the Gas and Electrical wouldn't last.
Heartbreaking that this can happen, it's been a long time since I was having to scratch around for coppers to get bread and milk.
My kids just Wander into the kitchen and help themselves to whatever without a second thought.....

I'm just watching this now. The family in Cambridge have a dog. I'm sorry if my kids were starving and living with no heating in freezing conditions, I would have to give up the pet. How do they feed the dog?!

@tedx and thats all you took from the programme?

@Sleepdeprived101 tbh in their situation I'd rehome the dog as well, it's just another mouth to feed. Heartbreaking though that is. It also looks as though the mother has an iPhone, which she could sell for a few hundred quid and fill the freezer / gas metre with the proceeds. Not an instant fix I know, but when you can get a smartphone for about £40 from Tesco it just makes more sense.

There is a thread about it in telly addicts Dispatches - http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/telly_addicts/3759190-Dispatches-Growing-Up-Poor

I work full-time in a school (well, as full-time as you can get with school hours), and work extremely hard with children who have additional support needs. The pay is shite, because the job is largely done by women, who have school aged children. Every month I bring home under £800. Where I live, that wouldn't even cover the monthly rent alone. I have a high-earning ex husband who contributes (we have 3 children). Without him we'd be fucked, but this is NOT how it should be.

So yes, circumstances in life can very much change, and no-one ever thinks that this will happen.

Well it's pretty shit to have your dog rehomed and it would be awful for the kids however surely your children's needs come first. If you can just about scrape by and keep the dog fair enough. But if you have your children living in a freezing home some tough decisions are going to have to be made.

I've been in that situation and I had to strip down my life to the bones and have only essentials. We only ate breakfast and one other meal per day. The kids ate first to their fill, whatever was leftover was for me. My kids would ask for fruit but I couldn't afford it as it isn't an essential item. We had zero snacks so no biscuits, fruit, crisps etc. We didn't have a pet but I would most definitely would have rehomed. I can understand that your mental health would be a mess when you're in that situation (mine was) and you feel like everything is falling apart. You're not living you're just surviving and it's a bloody shit existence.

I just watched it with two of my children (13 & 10). It was very sad, especially the mother who had lost her daughter. No parent should have to get into debt over the death/funeral of their child. Heartbreaking.
For the price of one of the dad's packets of cigs, however, he could have bought two of the secondhand GCSE guides for his daughter.