Save the Children launches appeal for children in the UK

[Vagaceratops]

BBC link

And it will get worse :(

Xenia it seems the only people who can have as many children as they wish are those on welafre and the very rich

Obviously so many leave the education semi-literate . . .

expatinscotland i wondered when that would start no being able to challage my argument but tease my dyslexia say more about you interlect than mine :(

Link for mr bojangles as asked. Many thanks to twofingerstoGideon who put this link on another thread.

www.crisis.org.uk/data/files/publications/Homelessness%20-%20a%20silent%20killer.pdf

I really cannot be arsed with this kind of crap.

You know what - I have seen first hand what real grinding horrible poverty is.

I have stood in human shit and tried not to breathe too deeply in a slum in Africa.

I have spoken with women who have nothing, and who have to hide their HIV+ status for fear of being shunned and abused by their neighbours.

I have talked with families who cannot afford to go to the doctor if their child gets sick. I have seen women who are forced to go to an extremely dodgy maternity hospital, because they have no money, even though they know that it could mean death for them or their unborn child. Or that the child may be stolen from them.

I still manage to find empathy with those in UK who live in 'relative' poverty. And I am angry that again and again the rhetoric comes back to flat screen TVs and blackberries.

The people living in poverty in UK are not the lazy feckless scroungers that the Daily Mail loves to portray. They are the WORKING POOR. They have jobs and cannot make ends meet.

Yes, of course it would seem like paradise for the women in Kenya, but that is no reason for us to accept that these kinds of living conditions here in our comparatively rich country.

Where does this idea come from that we can only feel one sorrow at a time? My heart can be heavy for the Kenyan family at the same time as it weeps for the family in Newcastle, or Leeds, or Glasgow.

Fab post Lindor.

lovely post mmelindor

Exactly mmelindor.
Exactly.
I know for a fact that there were children at my sons school who went hungry over the summer as they weren't getting their fsm daily.
My parents have both worked since they were 15. My mum gave up 4 years ago due to mobility issues and back problems (not disabled or claiming benefits) and my dad is 66 is still working and will continue to do so until he can't any longer.
No car, they don't drink, they do smoke but not much, no pets, no glam hols, no designer gear...just getting by.
And it's like that for so many people in this country.
I remember going hungry as a child. I remember not going to parties/out because I had no clothes to wear. I went without sanitary protection and used school loo roll stuffed into my knickers...nothing compared to a slum child, obv, but at times it was very grim indeed.
It's degrading. It's soul destroying. It's humiliating.
And the fact it's still going on in the uk in the 21st century is shameful.

Very well put MmeLindor.

This Newsnight report is absolutely heartbreaking.

Ah, the deserving and undeserving poor. They are ever with us, as are the fucking Tories.

Yay MmeLindor

What is actually really sad is that people actually believe the Daily Mail shit.

Hurrah MmeLindor for speaking some sense on this thread.

This kind of judgemental bollocks drives me mad. while I was in refuge I met women who relied on tins of beans from the Refuge store cupboard to feed their children. Women who had spent most of their lives battling poverty because their partners had been financially abusive, restricting their access to money so that they could barely feed their children. Im sure if all these judgey pants posters looked at these families on the surface they would rant about the fact that the husbands worked and the family lived in a 4 bed semi.

One lady had listened to her four year old son being raped every night by her violent H. She never left the house and her DC were rarely fed. In refuge she still struggled despite benefits.

It is not our place to judge. We do not know the circumstances and shouldnt need to know. If I see a child who is clearly malnourished I want to help him. There aren't conditions to helping others. theres arent tests that must be passed. It is irrelevant whether a child's parents are helping the child or neglecting the child. Children are innocent. Those of you judging and harping on about drinking tap water and working cash in hand - could you turn a starving child away from you table because its parents neglect had forced it there? could you look a small child in the eye and refuse to help it because you judged its parents? I didnt think so.

Some posters on this thread need to stop talking big and acting like these stats are just numbers. They are living breathing children, innocent children who are just as deserving of help as those starving in Africa.

In short

Why are we all arguing about the parents - about the fact that some of them smoke and some of them have blackberries and some have 50 chipmunks that they cant afford to feed.

How does any of this change the fact that children ARE in need.

How does any of this change the fact that families ARE struggling.

I dont believe it does.

When your child does something wrong or strays from the path, or suddenly finds themself in trouble do you refuse to advise and help them? No.
Many families are in need through no fault of their own. We could all do things differently in our lives and some families make mistakes. Some families repeatedly make mistakes. Does that mean that we should turn our backs on them. Charity is about helping others regardless of circumstances.

If I walk past a man begging i give him money. I dont ignore him on the basis that he may just use it all on drink, or may be a drug user or a fraud. If he is a drug user then he still deserves support and aid. If he is an alcoholic and "caused" his poverty he still deserves aid. He is in need therefore he deserves aid.

I was brought up to believe that all people are equal. I will stand by that until the day I day.

I am shocked but not surprised by this

This article and this thread very sad.

I try to see both sides.

On one side I know people who get lots benefits income support, tax credits and disability yet squander it then moan they havent got money for food or for kids clothes-that makes me angry especially if they boasted about i pad /new phone the preveious week

But these people representative of every person on benefits.

any income group can be rubbish with budgeting their money.

I remeber reading interveiw with one of big bosses at asda who said so many baby items including baby food nappies , clothes, food dumped in booze ailse as people make a choice.

I think as single or childless couple if you reckless just affects yourself but when they have kids then it affects the kids which is sad part.

Im not sure you can change the situtation by throwing more money at it sadly needs to be much better targeted as you can control how people spend their money,

I have worked in some very deprived areas of uk and seen 1st hand how depressing it can be.How some to choose to live their lives and have large families and dont take responsability but we must not tar everyone with same brush.

I have wide social circle and noticed on fb at xmas its always the lower'income freinds that go OTT with xmas even more so than the very wealthy ones.I try to put some perspective on it as parent I known pressures of xmas can be immense and we all want to spoil our kids but hopefully common sense prevails and they dont choose that above ensuring child is clothed appropriatly,fed and warm.

Peoples priorties as a whole have become skewed over the years cant remember the materialism that affects the uk now with wanting everything and being the bright house generation.

Some memories stay with me. As an older teen I had mate who lived with her mum in big block and whenever i went there her mum be chain smoking, with huge bottle cider,the flat was a mess and she never had meals cooked for her or comforts we took for granted. Coming from single parent family myself money was tight but can never remember being cold, was always fed, mum wasent the best cook but she tried.

I couldent go to any clubs
there were few family days out
we rarly went on holiday-couldent afford some school trips the big ones like year 6 trip or sking in comp but I was ok.
my mum was lucky so much family and free childcare too.

Its why made concious effort to provide a different life for my kids which mostly ends me broke but

they have their hobbies/clubs.
we do days out, annual holiday

I guess the trade off is

They dont get as many pressies vbut think building memories more important they remember that day out/hols long after presents ask eldest what she got last xmas she e hard pressed to remember.

Clothes-with 1st spent a fortune but i now

go nct sales/carboots
search ebay
have a nose round charity shops.

im proud to say some of eldest school uniform is like new and 2nd hand.

I didnet go out like my freind who said i have to buy all new for september just for salke of it some stuff fitted from last year, i made a list and stuck to it got a shirt 75p charity shop other day. I dont think the kids or others even realise they all nicely turned out in joules or mini boden sometimes for less than it would be to buy new from supermarket/Primark and often sell on for nearly what I paid.

We shop at farm foods, Lidls,market, we buy some value and i do try cook from scratch.

I breastfed and used cloth.

we one income family as with 3the childcare horrendous.
would like to go back for extra income but finding something that works around hubby,s 50hour week is hard.
The cars a drain but he needs that for work , energy and food bills constantly rising as noticed huge rises.

we lost our tax credits all £10 a week in April as threshold changed.
we rent privatly -that keeps going up, cost of moving privatly about 2grand.

we could well lose our child benefit next year or year after yet 2parents on combined income 80k could keep theirs.

I think in a mums defence part time work is hard as every ones looking for jobs and mums competing with people who don't have childcare issues as so many ads say must be fully flexible.
The new rules on working tax credits means instead of 16hours that,s gone up to24 and not every employer can up their hours so that,s another benefit lost.

Childcare is expensive as went back to work full time after 1st was born £800 a month. If just had 1 the local prep be cheaper!

dd goes to school in affluent suburb the so called squeezed middle and so many say they skint now, the cars in lilds car parks got nicer my nan always said the rich got money as they don,t spend spend spend.

At nearby community primary see kids in winter in summer uniform, no tights and no decent coat:(.

I think the ones that are at risk of poverty are now not just unemployed its lots of working people too as

wages not keeping up with cost of living and inflation.
sometimes people get into debt for necessities like when appliance breaks down or car its not all i pads and flat screens.

Those who private rent often live in substandard living conditions with high rents those in council ha have lower rents .

Those who work not eligible for benefits like they fallen off a cliff but once taxed and bills /rent paid nothing left at end of month.
Think lots fall into that category.

we cant just look at monetary benefits like jsa , disability, tax credits , child benefit as

free school meals
prescriptions/dentists
housing benefit
council tax relief
healthy start vouchers

these must help surly as often ends up the family whos working being worse off as they have to fund these things on top its why see so many at school with packed lunches as can afford school dinners.

wonga and payday if used very short term can be less money in interest than bank charges.

I dont know what the solution is.

not just more money

think credit unions
state childcare
better control over rented accomodation
financial managment and budgeting at school.

I watch secret millionaire and feel sad.
sen prigrammes on trussel trust and think terrible but we not as harsh as usa with tented cities and 99weeks jsa only.
I go through rough areas on bus and think thank god dont live here,

I think poverty more than just money its a attitude and sometimes generation after generation repeat same mistakes and trapped.

The right wing media choose to highlight the ones who take the mick and get loads.

The left just want to throw money at it.

neither have it right.

If we look more seriously at what this Coalition Government is doing we can see they are trying to tackle the causes of poverty and Iain Duncan Smith has refused to move Cabinet posts because he wants to see his reforms through and ensure budgets are NOT cut.

What interests me is that the most recent link above about the divorced mother who seems to have given up ful time work when she had children (I keep on and on at women on mumsnet never to do this no matter how hard it feels at the time to work and have children because you need that income certainty in future, men leave, men don't pay, men lose jobs so always support yourself with full time work however nice it might feel to be at home with babies)....

Secondly she has a car and she talks about clothes for the chidlren. We boyught 100% our children's clothes at charity shops when they were little. There has been a generational shift. those of us brought up with parents from WWII - the make do and mend generation have one ethos and some younger people have a different one. I buy things to last. I am still using a knife I boght at university in 1979 and I wear clothes until they have holes in. I am not sure those I work so hard to keep through my taxes adopt the same attitude.

We remain with the same bottom line - no money left and the squeezed middle rather fed up so that is likely to colour policies of all parties in the next few years.

The Coalition are swinging the axe in regard to cuts with absolute glee, Xenia.

Increasing unemployment, cutting vital benefits including those to people with disabilities and handing public assets like education and health to the private sector are not tackling the causes of poverty - it's ensuring that there will be much, much more.

Sigh.
So part time work is the answer is it?
Right.
I have 2 small children...one at school, one at pre school.
We had to wait for funded hours as we could not afford to pay.
My eldest son some sen so I have needed to be at home to do his therapies etc.
My dh works long hours -never really know from one day to the next what time he will be home that day and he has to go abroad every 6 weeks or so..this month it's the states for 8 days and then Europe for 2 days after that.
My parents are frail, my pils are great but live further away.
No other help.
I am recovering from a back op in may.
Please tell me what job I can do please?
Needs to be ideally between 9.30am and 12 noon weekdays.
I need time off for childs therapy appts etc
I need time off for my own hospital appts.
If my kids are Ill I will need time off.
If dh is away for long periods I might need time off.
I can't travel far due to time constraints and picking up kids from school.
I live in a small village.
Not many job ops here.
I do not want to childmind...I would have to alter my whole house to please ofsted and with 2 kids of my own would be limited to how many I could have anyway.
I can't do care work/heavy lifting due to my back problems.
I have to care for my 2 kids and -increasingly - my parents. I do voluntary work. I am a school governor.
I don't sit around and I am not lazy. We get no benefits and never have. it's just not that easy to find part time work if you are a sahp/main carer!
It really isn't.
The only jobs to apply for around here are care work and factory work working shifts and nights.
Sigh.....

You can't just engineer wealth by handing out bundles of cash.

If you give 10k in cash to everyone on under 20k then you make the new baseline poverty to be 30k - which means that everyone previously earning 30k is now in poverty - therefore you have your original "in poverty" population + the new. So then you up it 10k again and now the new baseline is 40k with an even bigger population. It just does not, and cannot work.

Badvoc I'd question your "poverty" given your husband works internationally... Anyway, to answer your questions about "what can I do which doesn't involve leaving the house and is flexible around medical appointments and health issues?" then you might wish to investigate opportunities and think of ideas with these guys: www.wireuk.org/

How does any of this change the fact that children ARE in need.
How does any of this change the fact that families ARE struggling.

It changes the solution. If the cause of the children suffering is because their parents are wasting the money they are given on non-priority items like cigarettes and alcohol then giving them more money is clearly not the answer.

If the cause is because benefits are taking too long to arrive then we work on speeding up the process.

From all the causes I've read on this thread so far, I have yet to see a convincing argument about the actual amount being not enough. It seems that the reality are either parents who have wrong priorities, huge debts or because of delays to benefits.

As part of my job I regularly travel to countries where there is real and absolute poverty. Like mmeLindor I've seen some things which have totally changed the way I look at life and made me VERY grateful to live in the UK. I'm not saying we don't have poor people. But we do need to put things in context and we do need to target help where it's needed.

Of course we need more jobs. But we also have a lot of people with little/no real employable skills. What do we do with people like that? We need to push them back into education and give them relevant skills. But as we can see, schemes like Workfare are about as popular as a fart in a lift.

Darkesteyeswithflecksofgold the link is about homelss adults not familes with small children

I still waiting for stats on homelsss familes in the uk when i mean homess no libing in a tempory accomadation which is classed as homeless in the uk i mean familes who are living on the street also were are the stats on children who have starved to due to lack food rather than neglect there are familes who live on benafits and there chikdren are not starving feeding your children above all elese is a choice we all have to make

Giving people whose priotys are wrong wont help children even if you give these people 500 a week there children would go with out

I lived on £200 a week and though not fun my child never went hungey no magic just i have the right priortys

And as for not having any cloths i simpy dont belive that nay parent in the uk cannot afford 3 out fit

One smart
One every day
And school uniform

I could kit you out in primark for all 3 for £50

You buy a couple of sizes bigger then they last

To many dont know how to budget there is a thread about not beleving you can feed a family on £50 that just shows people dont no what the hell is going on how to shop,cook or budget i my self see a lot of crap in peoples trollys and very little meat,fish unless breaded i see a awful loy of mums buying jars which cost twice the orice of just buying a oargange i also see people buying toddler milk cows milk unless the child needs it for medical reasons is 59p a pint ffs

Xenia although of course the poor don't pay prescription charges I suppose so they don't have that burden most other people do if they are ill.

I should suspect that being ill in the first place is enough of a burden.

Xenia - if you believe that about the coalition and IDS.....dear me

Otoh I completely agree with you about not giving up your job when you have children. My mother escaped dv and managed just fine as a lone parent because she was a qualified teacher. She often recalls other mothers commenting that it had been much easier for her - compared to them it was.
This was utterly impressed upon me and I qualified before I had dd(despite considerable pressure not to from exp) and I went back to work asap. It took until she was 2 to get a perm job but ow I am separated it has been the absolute sink or swim safety net especially in the current climate. I would advise other mothers to do the same.