Born on the breadline
IT’S a scary statistic, but a tragic reality: in Britain today more than four million children are growing up in poverty. Dispatches spent a year with three children and their families, to get a sense of what these young people face every day, and what life is really like when there’s not enough money for the things most of us take for granted.
We meet eight-year-old Courtney, who lives with her younger brother MJ and mum in Cambridge. In Suffolk, 15-year-old Danielle shares a bedsit with her mum, a couple of miles away from younger brother Phoenix who lives with their dad, while nine-year-old Rose, who lives in Morecambe Bay with her mum, brother and sister. How each of these families
ended up in financial difficulties could so easily happen to any of us: relationship breakdown, bereavement and funeral expenses, domestic abuse, mental illness, problems with benefits.
The way each of the children copes with the toughness of their lives and talks about their experiences is extraordinary.
Against the backdrop of empty fridges and cupboards and sleeping in their coats, these kids are also having to cope with issues such as being a young carer, trying to study for their GCSEs and dealing with grief and mental illness.
In a country like ours, in 2019, food banks shouldn’t even need to exist. But for the families featured here they are a lifeline, meaning the parents don’t need to choose between heating and eating.
This makes for a humbling, shaming and important watch.