Save the Children launches campaign to help UK families in poverty

Save the Children is seeking to raise £500,000 to help children from low-paid working families, who it says are going without hot meals and winter clothes

Save the Children has launched its first domestic appeal to help families plunged into poverty by cuts and recession. Photograph Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

The international aid charity Save the Children – best known for its work with starving youngsters in Africa – has launched its first domestic fundraising appeal, asking the public to dip into their pockets to help UK families plunged into poverty by cuts and the recession.

The charity is seeking to raise £500,000 to help children across the UK, many from low-paid working families, who it says are going without hot meals, new shoes and winter clothes, and missing out on school trips, toys and treats because their parents cannot afford the rising cost of living.

While the appeal target is modest compared to Save the Children's international humanitarian appeals, the campaign will be seen as a symbolically significant attack on what the charity says is the coalition's failure to tackle mounting poverty, hardship and inequality in the UK.

Launching its appeal, which bears the slogan It Shouldn't Happen Here, the charity said: "It is shocking to think that in the UK in 2012, families are being forced to miss out on essentials like food or take on crippling debts just to meet everyday living costs." Asked whether an anti-poverty fundraising appeal was necessary in the sixth richest country in the world, Chris Wellings, Save the Children's UK head of policy, said: "Poverty in the UK is different to some of the poorer countries in the world. It is more nuanced and poses different problems. But it does not mean that we cannot stand up for children's rights in the UK."

Save the Children plans to spend money raised on its Eat, Sleep, Learn, Play programme, which gives cookers, beds and other essential household items to families living in poverty, and its Fast scheme, which helps low-income parents to provide provide at-home educational support to their children.

Research published by the charity on Wednesday reveals significant numbers of parents in households with income of up to £30,000 a year are willing to skip meals, go into debt, avoid paying bills, and put off replacing worn-out clothing to ensure their children get enough food to eat. Although families below the poverty line (£17,000 a year household income) are worst hit, working families on "modest" household incomes are increasingly struggling to make ends meet as they attempt to cope with shrinking incomes, soaring food and energy costs, and cuts towelfare benefits and public services, says the report. According to a survey of 5,000 UK adults commissioned by Save the Children:

• Nearly two thirds of parents in poverty (61%) say they have cut back on food and over a quarter (26%) say they have skipped meals in the past year.

• One in five parents in poverty says they cannot afford to replace their children's worn-out shoes, while 80% of parents in poverty say they have had to borrow money to pay for food and clothes over the past 12 months.

• Some 44% of families in poverty say that "every week they are short of money", while 29% say they have "nothing left to cut back on".

Parents said financial worries were taking a toll on their physical and mental well-being, triggering arguments and other manifestations of family stress. Low-income parents were twice as likely as better-off parents to split up under the pressure, and more than twice as likely to snap at their children. Justin Forsyth, Save the Children's chief executive, said: "No child should see their parent going hungry or start the new term without a warm coat and with holes in their shoes. Poverty is tearing families apart, with parents buckling under the pressure of mounting bills and children seeing their parents argue more about money."

Save the Children is calling on ministers to stick to 2020 child poverty targets, encourage more employers to adopt the living wage currently set at between £7.20 and £8.30 an hour, provide extra childcare support for low-income parents, and modify the planned universal credit welfare system to allow parents to keep more of their earnings before benefits are withdrawn.The charity's Shouldn't Happen Here report is the second high-profile study by an international aid charity to focus on domestic poverty in recent months. Oxfam's Perfect Storm, published in June, said that cuts and rising living costs were threatening to return the UK tolevels of inequality not seen since Victorian times. An Oxfam spokesman said: "We have never done an appeal in the UK, and we should never have to do an appeal in the UK, but you can never rule it out."

Case study: 'We want to bring him up in a household with working parents'

Once the rent, council tax and utility bills have been paid, Kristie Locke, 20, and her partner, David Rooks, 25, are left with £7.70 a day to buy food, clothes and other essentials for themselves and their eight-month-old baby, Leyton.

They couple live in privately rented accommodation, a two-bedroom flat in Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, on a main road, which costs £550 per month.

The fridge contains carrots and green vegetables bought by Save the Children, a box of eggs, and a two-litre bottle of semi-skimmed milk that's almost gone. In a cupboard, tins of tomato soup, dried pasta, tea bags, tinned pineapple and stuffing mix.

They bulk buy disposable nappies and wipes, or take advantage of special offers from Iceland or Asda. Cleaning products come from pound shops. Save the Children bought them a table and chairs, and toys and books for their son.

Rooks has to get up at 1am to cycle to work, driving a lorry for Menzies transporting newspapers, earning £180 a week. He sleeps during the day.

He took out a £1,000 loan to buy a bicycle and furniture. The couple calculated they'd be better off if Locke were a lone parent, or if Rooks gave up work. Neither of them wants to do this – they want to stay together and bring up Leyton in a household with working parents. Locke says she would love to return to work but suggests childcare is too expensive. Rooks couldn't afford to buy a waterproof coat for work as their son – who was born prematurely – needed new clothes. His partner admits they regularly argue about money because of the strain of living on such a low income.

"I don't think it's fair that families on low incomes, such as us, are being taxed so heavily," Locke says. "The government is taking away our money in taxes on the one hand, then giving us little back and not enough to live on. It means I'm virtually trapped in these four walls as I can't afford to go out, as if it's raining I have to get a taxi or bus. David doesn't see why he should have to go out to work for almost nothing, as he's knackered at the end of a week."

The couple regularly miss meals and have to forgo fresh vegetables and fruit as they want to ensure that their baby gets a balanced diet and he eats fresh fruit and veg.

Locke says she would love to go to a soft-play centre with her son and to relax with her fiance for a few hours. Yet it is expensive and would eat into their meagre weekly allowance. The nearest park is one and a half miles away, too far to trek with a baby in a pram. She knows she would be better off if she were a single parent, as the couple once split up, briefly, and she moved into the flat on her own, before they reunited following Leyton's birth. "Previously my bills were £110 a month and I probably had £70 a week for me and Leyton to live on. It's so repetitive all the time living on the same food – mostly it's chicken and oven chips, pasta, spaghetti on toast and soup. We don't eat lunch and we have pancakes for breakfast." When Rooks goes to work, he can't afford to take a packed lunch.

Locke wants to return to college but she is too old to benefit from the free creche. "We don't want to split up because children whose parents stay together do better at school and we want to give him the stability. Neither of us wants to live on benefits."

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Ditulis oleh: Unknown - Sunday, July 1, 2012