Today is my 49th day doing the clothes off my back challenge. If you're a regular reader of the blog you'll remember that it all started with a conversation about capsule wardrobes and child poverty (you can read about it here), and has turned into me following these rules for 49 days so far, and a full year by the time I'm done.
I've been thinking about child poverty even more than usual over the last week for one good and one not so good reason which I'll share with you.
As is traditional I'll start with the bad news....
Our government has decided to change the way child poverty is measured. And (in my personal opinion) they've got this wrong.
Our current measure says that a child whose family are living on 60%
less than the national average income are living in poverty. Now as a
measure it's a bit of a blunt stick as individual families will move
above and below that line based on national income without their ability
to pay their rent changing one iota. But it does acknowledge that you
measure poverty by money.
The
government will now measuring the impact & the causes of poverty
(impact - attainment of children, causes - families being out of work) -
this isn't a bad idea BUT without maintaining an income measure there
is a risk that this will shift the debate from poverty to education and
back to work programmes. Crucial work to be sure but I don't care how
well your teacher/ mentor has prepped you for that exam/ interview, you
are not going to perform your best if you enter the room starving
hungry.
In my borough (Walthamstow) End Child Poverty estimate that 34% of children are living in poverty. To put it another way 10 children in the average classroom round here are living in families where they struggle to make ends meet. Not struggle to buy designer trainers, a new xbox or holidays. But to heat their homes in winter and keep everyone in the home fed and sheltered. This makes me angry. I spent years of my life doing direct work with families in areas of Sheffield and London where poverty is a real issue. I've worked with children who despite their parents best efforts are inadequately dressed for the weather, come to school bone cold because their house has no heating, or indeed hungry. And much as the rhetoric from our more right wing media would have you believe that this is because their parents are feckless and lazy - my experience is very different.
Lots of the families I've known who live in poverty have one or both parents in work (63% of children living in poverty nationally are in a working household), lots of them have children whose care needs are higher than the usual and most of them have cut out the luxuries for themselves before they reluctantly decided that their son or daughters winter coat would need to wait for the next paycheck. These are families like yours, made up of people like you and difference between what they need to spend to keep their heads above water and what they have coming is stark.
Income matters and I'm really worried that we've stopped measuring it.You can read more about why it is important here.
The GOOD NEWS of the week is also about income. Specifically it's about the rights of families of children in hospital to continue to get DLA. You'll remember I've talked about the brilliant Mathieson family before in my post about Dowser Day.
Contact A Family have been campaigning with
the Mathieson family against the rule that meant DLA payments stopped when
their son Cameron was in hospital for more than 84 days.
On Wednesday the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that this was a violation of his
human rights. This is the first time ever that the Supreme Court has
found for a claimant in a social security case, and it will be transformational
for all those whose children face extended hospital stays.
I'm not ashamed to say that there were tears and whoops in the Contact A Family offices as this verdict came through - it is brilliant, brilliant news.
It's made it easy to keep plodding on with the clothes of my back challenge this week. I know in the scheme of things that the challenge is a small thing - but the money raised helps Contact A Family to do the big, the exciting, the life changing things.
And with 41% of families of disabled children telling us they've had to take a loan out to pay for food, there is still a lot of work to be done. Thankyou for your support - as always if you want to Support Contact a Family's work you can do so here.
And here for all you rule checkers are day 47 & 48's #clothesoffmyback photos. No effort at all made to pose in these sorry!
Hello Everyone,
Those of you that follow either me (@edarcherthinks) or Contact A Family (@contactafamily) will have noticed a lot of tweets about Dowser Day recently. You'll have seen lots of photo's of dinosaurs and may have wondered what it is all about.
Over the last few years Contact a Family been supporting the Mathieson
family as they fight against the government rule that
takes away Disability Living Allowance (DLA) payments from
children who spend over 84 days in hospital.
The Mathiesons' son Cameron spent over two years in hospital
with cystic fibrosis and muscular dystrophy when his DLA payments
were stopped. The family are currently awaiting a decision from the
Supreme Court on their legal challenge to scrap this rule. If they
are successful it could mean no other family loses essential
financial support when their child spends long periods in
hospital.
Sadly Cameron passed away in October 2012, aged five. Every year
on his birthday, 19 June, his mum, dad, brothers and sister
celebrate his life through Dowser Day, a nod to Cameron's love of
dinosaurs.
Cameron's dad Craig Mathieson explains: "Cameron loved
everything and everyone in his life and, like many boys his age, he
was fascinated with dinosaurs. Because of Cameron's speech delay he
couldn't say dinosaur and called them Dowsers instead."
One of the reasons I love working for Contact A Family is that the Mathieson's aren't a symbol or a test case for us. Everyone in the organization - including people like me who have never met the family take the situation they were put in by this unfair rule personally.
Which meant when we were offered a way to show the family we cared about their loss, and we were grateful for all the effort they are putting in to change this situation for other families by joining in Dowser Day celebrations everyone really threw themselves into it.
Here's some of the stuff the team made in our lunchbreaks:
You can find loads more contributions to Dowser Day from staff, families and supporters here and our thankyou video here. People from all over the country got involved. It was brilliant, and no it won't make a difference to the outcome of the court case wether we made a giant dinosaur head or not. But it does make a difference to remember that families of disabled children are families first, and to support and celebrate ordinary family life.
And it does (to me at least) make a huge difference to work in a charity where everyone really gets that and knows that it is not for us to set an agenda for families but to support them to set their own agenda, get their voices heard and celebrate and protest in a way of their choosing. Contact A Family are really good at what they (we) do, because we are all about families leading the way. Doesn't that sound like the kind of organisation you want to support? As always donating is easy you can do so here.
As the youngest of 10 children I know what it is to wear secondhand clothes. I and all my siblings have always been accustomed to passing things between us to get the best wear out of them, and if I am honest I've always quite liked it.
Nothing makes me happier when someone compliments me on an item than to crow 'hand-me-down! My sister/ mum has such good taste'. I wear clothes that belonged to family members when I feel nervous or upset because I find it comforting that someone I love has already worn them. My grandad died when I was a teenager and when my mum asked if there was anything of his I wanted I asked for his gardening shirts. I still wear them regularly.
Of course it wasn't just clothes that were hand me downs. If you wanted to take up hobby or play an instrument and you were in the younger half of the family you'd better hope an older sibling had had the same idea first. My tennis racket- Julya's before mine. The rollerskates - everyones before mine (this didn't worry me much as I was terrified of them). The dolls - well some of those were mine first, but you could tell the ones that had passed through Vanessa's hands because their noses or fingers would be bitten off (she works in a primary school now - which I bet is comforting to all you parents).
And bra's, well bra's are an expensive item - so your first 'passage to womanhood' training bra was bought new from Marks and Spencer, and after that you worked out who in the house was the closest fit to you and got the ones they were done with (Clean is as good as new remember). This wasn't as bad as it sounds - some of my sisters were a fair bit older than me so had jobs and nice stuff so the hand-me -downs were usually good quality. And I was particularly lucky as I was closest to mums size so got her spares, which as I got older moved from the bras that didn't quite work for mums work (where she did a lot of lifting) to, when I left home the underwear dad bought her that there was no way she was wearing. This meant I had nicer (& fruitier) underwear than most girls my age, and didn't buy myself my own bra until I was 22 and had to finally accept that I am bigger than my mum. So I did the logical thing and went up a back size and that is the size I've worn ever since. It's convenient as it's the same size as Julya so if we buy something and don't like it we can swap. No problems.
But what I am coming to is this. I have never been measured for a bra in my adult life. I've read all the articles, and had friends wax lyrical about the wonders of properly fitting underwear and thought, yes, sure - but what kind of idiot doesn't know what size of bra fits.
It turns out an idiot like me. Last week I went shopping for underwear to see me through the challenge. A certain high street store offers £5 off a bra if you get measured first, so I did. I went down 2 back sizes and up 3 cupsizes! And I've been wearing the wrong size all this time because of hand-me-downs!
Now I find this story funny, I think it reflects how close and ok with each other my family is. But I hesitated putting it up because I also knew that some people don't believe that clean is as good as new, and would just find the whole thing a bit grim. And if that's you then I'm sorry - because here's the thing. My family were broke but we were not living in real actual poverty - it was tight because there were a lot of us but we always went to bed with full stomachs (though I know on occasion my parents didn't).
Real poverty is worse and 1 in 4 disabled children are living in it, 33% of families with disabled children regularly miss meals. And it's getting worse - Contact a Family's campaigns manager Una Summerson reacted to welfare proposals by saying:
"While benefits relating to the additional costs of disability
will be protected, the overall freeze on working-age benefits and
tax credits means that families with disabled children will be
worse off under proposals set out today in the Welfare Benefits
Bill.
"A two year freeze in these benefits means families with
disabled children will face a cut in their incomes in real
terms.
"This will be worrying news as many families with disabled
children have been hit time and again by cuts in recent years. A
third have already been affected by social security changes and
many are experiencing delays in vital support services for their
child. They are not in a position to shoulder anymore."
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