Tough choices: Jonny Boux of Ambition Aspire Achieve
(Picture: Matt Writtle )Nine-year-old Martin doesn’t talk about the cost of living crisis but what he does want to share is that his mother Laura is anxious about things that never upset her before.
“Sometimes things happen outside school that make it hard for me to concentrate inside school,” he said, fidgeting with his play-dough at his primary school in Streatham.
Earlier Laura, 40, a single mother of five living on benefits, said: “I try not to put my worries on my children, but these days I do get bit ‘aggie’ with them. Martin can drink almost a bottle of milk at a time but the price of it has shot up and I can’t afford to keep buying it.
“Sometimes, while I am feeding the baby, he eats half a loaf of bread in one go and I shout, ‘what have you done?’ He tells me, “I’m sorry, I’m hungry”. I feel bad but I tell him, “that bread has got to last so we can eat tomorrow” — and then he gets upset and throws a tantrum and upsets the whole family.”
Tensions at Martin’s home have spilled into school with teachers reporting that Martin’s behaviour had got “really bad”. And it’s not just battles over staples like milk and bread. Martin, who has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, shares a bedroom with his younger brother and sister, and with his mother bedding down with the baby on the living room sofa, space is at a premium. “
Martin said: “When I get to school, I sometimes need to escape the classroom and get outside to the playground where there is space.”
Martin’s spontaneous exits from classrooms have caused problems, but a couple of months ago he started getting weekly help from Unlocking Potential, a charity that provides therapeutic support to more than 3,000 children in 24 schools in 10 London boroughs.
Laura says the difference in Martin’s behaviour since he started one-on-one therapy is huge and calls Unlocking Potential “a Godsend”.
“Therapy has given him an outlet to open up and talk and has started to transform his behaviour,” she said. “He has become more understanding and accepting and when there is conflict, it doesn’t escalate so quickly and that’s changed the atmosphere at home for everybody.”
Unlocking Potential is one of more than 200 charities that the Standard has funded as part of our On the Breadline campaign with the Independent — in partnership with Comic Relief and The Childhood Trust. Of the £4 million raised since November, we have handed out £2.78 million in grants, with the balance due to be disbursed in a further round in the next few weeks.
Cassie Oakeshott, CEO and clinical director of Unlocking Potential, said their £50,000 grant would allow them to reach more schools in deprived areas of London and support more vulnerable children like Martin.
Ms Oakeshott said: “The squeeze on family budgets is having a huge impact on the children we help. The children tell our therapists their parents are struggling to pay the rent and they worry they will get evicted and have to move schools — and lose their friends. They talk about their mothers not eating, of parents holding down two jobs and being too tired to take them out or to play, of arguments at home over bills and of the embarrassment of having to put back food at the checkout.”
The idea that children sometimes have to soak up the brunt of parental stress due to the cost of living crisis is one other charities recognise as well. Jonny Boux, CEO of Ambition Aspire Achieve, a charity based in Newham also awarded a £50,000 grant from our appeal, said that “when parents are choosing between heating and eating, everything goes out of the window”.
He added: “Simply playing with your children, taking them on day-trips, short holidays — the sort of thing that can give children respite from the daily grind of poverty — all that goes missing very quickly. When that happens over an extended period, it can be damaging to a child’s horizons and aspirations.”
Speaking from the charity’s base — a playground in Canning Town where they provide after-school activities — Mr Boux, 48, said the grant would allow them to provide regular day-trips and half-term residentials to 250 children from low-income households aged eight to 16. Plans include a sailing trip around the Isle of Wight where 15 children will crew a boat for four nights, residential trips in Wales and Mersea Island in Essex and to a farm in Gloucestershire — as well as day-trips to Legoland and the seaside, Hampstead Heath and Epping Forest.
Kate, nine, who has attended their after-school club for two years, said the recent residential at Mersea Island was her first trip away in a year. As a measure of how things have deteriorated in the last six months, Mr Boux said they had started running a Friday foodbank and had seen demand shoot up since the cost of living crisis from five to 50 families. Food is supplied free by supermarkets as well as The Felix Project, which received a £120,000 grant from our appeal and is one of four charities we have funded that tackle food poverty. The others are FareShare, The Mayor’s Fund for London via their Kitchen Social project and City Harvest, which were given £500,000, £200,000 and £50,000 respectively.
For parents, like Carol, 41, who has multiple sclerosis and whose eight-year-old son Sam gets therapeutic support from Unlocking Potential at his school in Lambeth, the help we are funding is a game-changer. “I’m living day to day and terrified about bills,” she said. “I am skipping meals to feed them. Sam is fixated on Pokemon cards but I can no longer afford them. I also can’t afford to take him ice-skating.”
Carol added: “Sam’s therapy is making a big difference. Without the the therapies team I would have cracked.”
The list of phase one grants from our partnership with Comic Relief can be found here.
Grantees from our partnership with The Childhood Trust can be found here.
