Photograph: Gary Calton/The Observer
At Rift House primary school in Hartlepool classrooms now have spaces in which children can sleep. “We see little ones coming in worn out,” said Dave Turner, the school’s headteacher. “Sometimes they are sharing a bed with siblings. Sometimes they share with different families.”
The cash-strapped school gives all its children free breakfasts, PE kits and stationery, but beds were a stretch too far. However, that is about to change thanks to a charitable project led by another local head, which launched last week and aims to deliver 10,000 new beds to children in the Tees Valley in the next three years. Turner’s school already has a list of families they want the project to help.
While food banks and kids arriving at school too hungry to learn have dominated the headlines, bed poverty has been quietly growing. Barnardo’s estimated last year that almost 900,000 children in England had to share a bed or sleep on the floor.
Mark Tilling, head of High Tunstall College of Science, a secondary school in Hartlepool, has worked with local businesses and run fundraising events to raise £70,000 to get the Tees Valley project off the ground. He has partnered with Zarach, a charity set up by a deputy head in Leeds, that has given thousands of beds to impoverished children. The fact that this is needed at all makes Tilling angry. “In the 21st century, we shouldn’t be talking about kids without food or beds,” he said. “How the hell do we get good results for children in school if they don’t have beds to sleep in?”
Teachers say that just as kids cannot learn on empty stomachs, if they haven’t slept properly they can’t concentrate, might not make it to school on time, or at all, and are less likely to be resilient and happy.
In the Tees Valley project, schools will refer families they know are in need of a bed for their kids. A lot of those they will be helping here are the working poor, who aren’t on benefits and don’t have any services supporting them. “They are the parents who are working all hours, probably doing long shifts, and doing their damnedest to support their families but struggling,” he said.
Ellie McGrath, Zarach’s funding and communications manager, said: “I went into a house the other day where there was a dad and three children sharing two airbeds between them.”
The charity often helps mothers who have fled domestic abuse and arrived in a new place, to an empty flat, with nothing. “We’ve got people moving into unfurnished houses and they have to pay for food and fuel, so a bed has become a luxury item rather than a priority,” McGrath said.
On their home visits they also see families unable to replace children’s mattresses that are soiled or infested with bugs.
Each brand new bed and mattress the charity gives out, designed to last the child for eight years, also come with a duvet, bedding, new pyjamas and toiletries. McGrath explained: “Some parents don’t have a washing machine to wash bedding, or they may struggle to get things dry in a house that is already damp.”
In Hartlepool, the first new beds went out to “delighted” children from the warehouse last week, and Tilling said referrals were already building.
Eddie Huntington, assistant director for education and inclusion at Stockton-on-Tees borough council, who has been involved in setting up the project, is thrilled that some children at the primary he used to run in Stockton have already been given a bed. “We might take beds for granted,” he said. “These families don’t.”
He agreed that schools are in a good position to spot signs that families are seriously struggling with poverty, and those included obviously exhausted children. “When other people can walk away, schools can’t,” he said. “Teachers and pastoral workers in schools are now at the heart of social care, whether we like it or not.”
