The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
‘Period poverty’ and the ‘shame’ of being hungry
In the first of a three-part series looking at child poverty, Michael Alexander speaks to Dundee families who are struggling to make ends meet, examines the reasons for their circumstances and finds out what efforts are being made to improve people’s fort
With just months to go until the muchanticipated opening of the £80.1 million V&A Museum of Design, hopes are high that thousands of new visitors will flock to Dundee and that the city’s own population will re-engage with one of the most beautiful waterfront sites in Europe.
But with a UK-wide report by the End Child Poverty Coalition revealing that 28% of children in Dundee are in poverty, and the Cities Outlook 2018 report, published days later, claiming 25% of city jobs will be taken over by machines by 2030, concerns have also been raised that prospects for swathes of the city’s population remain bleak.
Dundee mum Shauna Gauntlett knows all about the impact of child poverty because she grew up in it. Raised by an unemployed single mother, she “always lived in damp houses” and remembers going to school hungry in the days long before the creation of foodbanks.
The former Lochee Primary and Menzieshill High School pupil has no doubt that those early experiences lowered her aspirations in life, affected her school grades and, as an adult, contributed to her becoming homeless and dependent on Dundee Foodbank, where, ironically, she had been helping as a volunteer.
But despite getting married in 2015 and establishing herself as a selfemployed drama teacher, she was reminded in 2016 just how perilous Dundee’s low-wage economy can be.
The now-30-year-old had so little money after the birth of her son Jacob, she could not afford maternity pads to tackle her post-natal bleeding. The struggle to buy the pads is one example of what she regards as the scandal of “period poverty”.
Shauna was delighted when Jacob was born but he arrived in the middle of the month, between pay days for her civil servant husband Bennie, 32.
Surviving on only one, low wage, the couple had a lot of unexpected expenditure and a delay in the payment of tax credits pushed them to the breadline.
Back home after the birth, Shauna bled for more than a month after her stitches burst and she had to ask family and friends to buy sanitary pads and groceries for her.
She is pleased free sanitary towels are now being given out to women on demand at foodbanks but she says “period poverty” is often overlooked – as
It gets so bad sometimes that I’ll skip a meal just so the kids can eat. I might have a bit of toast. That’s it
is the fact that many of those forced to use foodbanks are the so-called ‘working poor’.
Dundee father-of-three Mark instinctively knows how to spot families who are struggling – because he’s also there himself. He “greets inside” when he sees some of the hungry children at the school gates each morning.
It reminds him of the “upsetting” time children at a birthday buffet stuffed their faces like they’d never eaten.
But despite being below the poverty line, he tries to keep the realities of his family’s economic circumstances hidden from his own children to protect them from “stigma and shame”.
Mark, 41, who was physically abused by an alcoholic father as a child, often went hungry as his mother worked two jobs and still struggled to feed him and his siblings. His main ambition in life when he left school at 16 was to create a stable family home of his own and after years of low-paid work, he secured a £30,000-a-year job. However, he was made redundant two years ago due to ill health and ended up on benefits. That’s when the family were pulled into poverty and his battle with mental health issues took hold.
Having never been dependent on social security benefits in his life, Mark has found his family forced to use foodbanks and embroiled in disputes with the Department for Work and Pensions over threats to take the roof from over his children’s heads.
He said: “It gets so bad sometimes that I’ll skip a meal just so the kids can eat. I might have a bit of toast. That’s it.
“But it’s the other things, like the kids not being able to go to after-school clubs. I try to keep the house looking as neat and tidy as we can. But a lot of things we had when I was working we’ve had to sell. What luxuries we do have we bought when I was working but aren’t worth anything to anyone else.”