To think there is not really any chikdren in poverty in the uk

[Domjolly]

I think last nights comic relief has really brought home to me and my family that there is not really any children in the uk who live in REAL poverty

There is not one child that has to walk 3 hours to school
There is not one child that cant get some form of education
There is not one child who can get medical intervention
I think you would be hard pressed to find familys which children who are homeless or who dont have clean water and sanitation

And i actaully now thing people who say this is insulting to children who do live in real poverty

And I second the pp about the nhs, its amazing and should be cherished

There are many children living in the uk in very real poverty. I work with them everyday and it breaks my heart. Of course they aren't as badly off as those in third world countries but that doesn't make it acceptable. Do you realise for example that a seventeen year old living with a single parent, may only actually have one set of job seekers allowance to live on between them? No longer entitled to child benefit and the seventeen year old can't claim JSA. It's is an horrendous way to live.

I do agree with you that the poverty usually goes hand in hand with parental neglect I.e. benefits money spent on socialising or gadgets rather than good food

That old chestnut.

Benefits being spent on luxuries so the children go hungry, benefit amounts do not cover luxuries.

People on benefits only suffer if they are feckless? NO.

Sometimes people on benefits go hungry because money doesn't get paid or because a fridge breaks down, lots of parents go without food so their children can eat, lots of people sit in cold homes because they have to choose between money on the gas card and feeding their children.

At one time when on benefits, I regularly had to choose between food or heat, obviously I chose food and we just had to suffer the cold. On the day my benefits were paid I would pay bills, buy gas and electric and buy food shopping, there would be pence left at the end of that day. The gas wouldn't last the week if I had the heating on.

Yes compared to some children in the third world we had it easy, that didn't mean my children weren't living in poverty though, it is relative.

What the fuck is happening on Mumsnet lately? it is like the daily mail comments section and Netmums rolled into one.

At what point have I made personal remarks about peoples living arrangements , asylum seekers , african parents are better wtf? where rape and domestic violence is rife? yes of course

What I'm talking about is more neglect, which people who commit neglect often hide behind poverty,I refer to poverty of the mind because these people probably know no better and were more than likely raised the same.

The rub show you define poverty
Yes Children in uk have sanitation,clean water,free health care.things we take for granted
If poverty is measured as relative it will always shift the parameters

No poverty? www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-berkshire-21456790

"When London councils began investigating this issue, it was common to see squalid shacks in back gardens, typically inhabited by numerous illegal immigrants.

A survey carried out by Brent Council turned up hundreds of outhouses built in this way.

Milestone were charging young father Andreas Luiz £1,000 a month to house his wife and child in a small, windowless room with a fake garage door." www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-21574772

www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/may/09/london-landlords-desperate-tenants

" there's no hot water, so when she wants to wash she needs to boil two huge vats of water on the stove.

Maria sleeps on a mattress on the floor, the furniture is broken, and the flat is heated only by a feeble electric radiator....

the man with mental health problems who lives in the main house and who regularly defecates in the garden, which is already scattered with detritus left by former tenants ? old kettles and beer cans.

"We don't know where her toilet effluent is going to," Christine Lyons, the council's planning enforcement team leader, says, peering anxiously to the side of the building....

"We found a walk-in freezer where people have been living, paying rent to live there," Wales says. "The record was one house with 38 people, of whom 16 were children...

his medium-sized ground floor bedroom: mattresses are laid out on every bit of the floor not taken up by the double bed..... The mattress on the bed looks dirty and above the bedroom door there is a large rectangle of sticky yellow tape covered with the corpses of some of the cockroaches who share the room....A young mother is sitting with her three-month-old baby in a cluttered room at the back of the house.... there's another family with two children, a two-year-old and a five-year-old,"

Tell me those children are not in poverty???

and this one "A Lithuanian builder who is working on a nearby site in the Olympic village answers the door at a three-storey red brick terrace house, and is happy to show the planning officials through to the back yard, where a couple are living with their two-year-old in a compact red-brick shed."

"There are only two toilets, which she says, "is not at all enough". She is looking forward to returning to Hyderabad, where the living conditions will be much better."

So OP

The woman on a minimum wage job who is living in one room in a B&B with her 2 children is not living in poverty? She was put there as emergency accommodation by the council. She has virtually no help with the rent. She has to pay to eat out twice a day. She has to choose between getting her children to school at the other side of the city or eating. She can't afford to save for a deposit anywhere else because her entire income is eaten up trying to survive. Yes she does exist. DP met her last week through work.

The 7 children living with their parents/ guardians 2 bed house I met late last year are not living in poverty? Four of those children were taken by their aunt and uncle because their mother could not look after them any longer for health reasons. There are children sleeping on floors, sofas, and even a couple sharing a single bed. There is one wage coming into that house and its minimum wage. Tax credits have been messed up and have not been paid for a while. They are not neglected they are fed basic food, helped with their homework and taken to school, well dressed and loved but every day is a struggle for the basics

The little girl who my teacher friend has to provide breakfast, toothpaste, toothbrush and other basic toiletries as well as a uniform from lost property is not living in poverty?

Wake up OP its all around us. You may have been lucky enough to avoid its symptoms but not everyone is that lucky. I hope you remain that lucky

Neglect and poverty are not the same thing and don't always go hand in hand.

When I was seriously on my uppers My children were always clean and had properly made beds with clean sheets and duvets etc.

We were poor not dirty.

The only game console they had was one given to us second hand by a relative.

Amberleaf

It is so sad that there are so many people on here ready to so openly judge others.
I totally agree with your point about Daily Mail comments, can't say I've been on Netmums.

There are many people living in the UK in poverty. Perhaps it makes the rich feel better if they pretend these people don't exist. Perhaps its guilt from those who voted the Cons in, or those spouting how happy they are about Welfare cuts.
There is a huge growth in Food Banks, I don't think any of the much needed food donated will be enough.

I think we need a definition of poverty before that question can be answered properly. I agree that neglect is worse than poverty.

whimiscal exactly, you didnt talk about people who are living in poverty for real reasons and the society is letting down, instead you jumped on the bandwagon of the feckless underserving poor

smudging for you it may be a handfull, wherever you live, how ever I live in the second poorest borough in the UK and it is definitely more then a handful. That is one of the issues, the divide.

scottish all children in UK do not have those things. Sanitation, clean water and health care. That is the point.

There definitely are children living in poverty in the UK. Watch this BBC documentary

Watching CR last night had me considering this very topic. Although some children living here in the UK may live in dire circumstances, there is still hope. Our children have access to education and medical care. At some point when they're older they may use their education to improve their lives. It's a spec of light at the end of a very dark tunnel. Unfortunately some of the children I saw last night won't even get that. They might not even live beyond school age. Their light at the end of the tunnel is the aid they receive from us which is why it's important we continue to donate.

Yabu and very narrow minded op.

100,000 children a year run away and live on the streets. 100% of these children end up with substance abuse problems and a huge majority are abused. A significant number are not reported missing by their parents so no-one knows they are even missing. One in four is aged under 11! All of these stats are supported by the Railway Children annual report.

These are children in extreme poverty, an unrecognized and predominantly ignored section of our society who deserve so much more.

To say YABU hardly touches it - read about Mumsnet's link up with the Railway Children if you still think that it is only in other countries that children sleep under bridges or don't eat for days

what are we going to do? sponsor a whole nation? real change can not be caused by a few million pounds. if we really want to change the situation of a people, it comes down to changes in politics, the IMF, and so on. When you have a country where people are starving and the IMF is taking all their staple food as payment (say flour in Pakistan) and selling it back at grossly inflated prices, that is the real problem and cause of why people can not afford food.

I never feel very moved by this kind of stuff written in the UK. Yes the benefits office has a lot to answer for when the amount paid is short. But the £670 rent seems incredibly high. People should be housed in cheaper accommodation. But that is never a very popular idea. It puzzles me that some people seem to manage fairly well on benefit and others are down to lilving on one weetabix with water. Something isn't right somewhere or we are not being told the whole story.

www.railwaychildren.org.uk/campaigns/help-make-the-invisible,-visible

Have a read!

www.railwaychildren.org.uk/campaigns/help-make-the-invisible,-visible/

sorry - can't do links on my phone but please, have a read!

vivienne what about those not entitled to benefits in the first place!!

where is this cheaper accommodation you are talking of?

You are not only being unreasonable, you, and those agreeing with you, are being stupid, ignorant and completely uninformed and oblivious.

Let them eat cake eh?

You can be poor without being the poorest, like you can be ill without being about to die

There are the resources you mention in the UK but that doesn't mean everyone has access to them especially children

often their parents prevent them having access to healthcare or education

you're being dim

The issue of private landlord subsidies has made this problem much much worse. And that is the fault of the Labour government who started these huge housing benefit subsidies. I am sure there are properties to rent a lot cheaper than £670. Who are these people not entitled to benefits. I thought everybody was who qualified.

'Our children have access to education and medical care.'

No, they don't - not all of them. What about parents who spend everything on drugs, who don't get their kids treated when they are ill, who don't feed them properly?

Children cannot access these things without decent parents