Caving in and going under? I don’t have that option..
Surviving in area where 76% of kids are in poverty Mum starves herself so she can feed her little girls
WHEN little Codie-Leigh Stewart turned four last year, friends joined her for a “sweet tea” birthday party, with cakes and 30p-a-pack biscuits from Lidl.
But this year even that modest celebration is out of the question.
Mum Rebeka Stewart says: “It’s Codie’s birthday soon, but she won’t be able to have a party and she looks forward to that so much every year.”
Rebeka’s youngest daughter Harper-Jae, whose birthday is also in December, a few days before Codie’s, will also miss out as Covid piles further strain on finances already at breaking point.
Rebeka, who also has a threeyear-old daughter, Mya-Lou, had a Government Budgeting Loan, but they stopped taking repayments due to the pandemic, which means she cannot apply for another to get her through Christmas.
The family live in an area with the highest rate of child poverty in the UK, a cluster of six streets in the centre of Middlesbrough, Teesside.
Child poverty has risen most sharply in the North East and parts of the Midlands over the past four years, according to new research by Loughborough University and End
Child Po Poverty. t In I Middlesbrough Middle esb gh and parts of Tyneside, child poverty rates have risen by more than 10% since 2014/15.
In Rebeka’s area, deprivation is stoic ally accepted as a fact of life, with 76% of children now living below the breadline.
Despite the challenges, Rebeka tries to stay positive. Her cheerful disposition drops only once.
She says: “We smile and laugh a lot in this house, but there are days when I really, really struggle.
“You can’t help it. No matter how hard it is, scrimping and saving, borrowing and going without, I don’t have the option of caving in and going under, giving in to my anxiety and depression. If I did that what would happen to the girls?
“They’d be taken into care. “Don’t get me wrong, there are some dark days where I think maybe that’s the best thing for them, they’d have more stuff if they were in care.
“But I make sure my girls know they are loved, that they are everything in this world to me and I know that is worth more than a few extra presents at Christmas.”
“Going without” is not unusual for Rebeka. Recently her kit kitchen h t tap b broke k and, d gtti getting g little response from her private landlord, she had to buy a new one for £22 from a local hardware store and pay a plumber £40 to install it.
The money had to be raked back somehow, so for three days Rebeka did not eat a single meal.
She says: “There was hardly anything left for the food that week, about £15, which doesn’t go far for a family of four.
“The gas and heating stayed on and the girls got fed, even if it was only beans on toast. It meant that I didn’t eat anything for three days and when my family found out they went t mad d at t me f for not saying anything. They have their own problems, they don’t need mine piled on top, but my aunty forced me to go and have a meal at hers. She said I’d end up in hospital otherwise.”
Rebeka does her best to spare the girls similar indignities, but sometimes it just is not possible.
She looks at the floor as she says: “Codie had to miss her school trip, it was awful when her friends were going and she couldn’t, but I’d been robbing Peter to pay Paul that week and we just didn’t have the money.
“I tried to make it up to her but I could tell how disappointed she was
to miss out.” The trip cost £5 and was to Newham Grange Farm across town, but on this meagre budget it was as unattainable as a ski trip to the Alps.
Rebeka receives £128 a fortnight income support, child benefit of £117 and child tax credit of £48 a week.
She received £ 13.78 to support Harper-Jae, because being a third child born after April 2017, she falls foul of the Tories’ austerity measure that hammered parents with more than two children. After buying food, her pre-paid gas and electricity of £20 per week and the luxury of an £ 18- a- month TV subscription, Rebeka normally managed to break even. But she has come to dread birthdays, especially with Codie and Harper’s both falling in December. Occasionally she has been forced to use the local foodbank. The last time was in January. That week, Codie had needed a new school uniform which meant an expensive visit to Asda, a five-mile round trip on foot pushing a double buggy.
Rebeka says: “Things like that can push you over the edge financially.
“Normally I manage, but that week I didn’t have any money left at all, we had nothing – in fact I owed money to my mum and uncle, I was in debt.
“I had no choice but to go to the foodbank and they were so nice and helpful, it was an absolute Godsend and just to know it is there if things really fall apart is comforting.
“I’m so often juggling debt that it becomes a way of life. I had to take a taxi to a hospital appointment recently, which means I can only pay my Mam a tenner of the £20 I owe her. That’s how it goes on and on and on. You live with it, that’s life.”
The girls’ dad lives nearby and has a good relationship with his daughters, but he does not work and is unable to contribute, putting the onus on Rebeka to keep the plates spinning.
Her small home is at the end of a terraced street with a few boarded up houses. There is a park at the end of the road, where the girls like to play when the warm weather comes.
Rebeka says one day she would like to save for a deposit to move somewhere better, but realises that is unlikely to happen. She says: “It’s horrible round here. We had to isolate when Mya-Lou wasn’t well and the council delivered a food parcel to me because I couldn’t go out.
“In the time it took for me to walk to my doorstep to pick it up, someone had nicked it.
“The lady who dropped it off hadn’t even got back into her car.
“We just stood and looked at each other. I had to laugh.”
Rebeka’s plight is not unusual in the Gresham area where she lives. In fact, in the streets that lead off the town’s bustling, multi-cultural Parliament Road, the kids who are not living in poverty are part of a small minority.
Sarah Barber, 34, knows this all too well. The strain of living under the savage restraints of a sudden cap on her monthly benefits is written all over her care-worn face.
She lives with her eight children, Bethany, 18, Amy, 13, Cody, 11, Paul, 10, Tara, seven, Roman, six, Lucas, three and Jerome, two.
Before the introduction of Universal
Credit, Sarah was receiving £500 a week in income support, child benefit and tax credit. She now receives £ 1,000.29 a month. Her privately rented terraced house in Gresham costs £650 per month, leaving £350.
Sarah says: “I’ve lost three stone because I have to deny myself food so that the kids can eat. The longest I’ve gone is five days and I know it’s having an effect on my physical and mental health. But I’ve no choice but to keep going, trying to keep us all afloat.”
Sarah’s 74-year-old mother Mary Barber is an anxious and frequent visitor to her home. Sarah says: “I don’t know what I would do without my mum, she does so much for us. “She should be enjoying her later years and not worrying about keeping her daughter and grandchildren fed.
“But if she didn’t come over and bring us food and cook for us we would be in a really worrying state.”
There are dark days when I think they’d be better off in care.. they’d have more
REBEKA STEWART MUM OF THREE IN POVERTY HOTSPOT