Living With Poverty

Episode
Country Kids
Broadcast Info
2012 (29 mins)
Description
Holt, a beautiful market town in North Norfolk, known as prosperous and well-heeled, turns out to be a hot spot of child poverty on the quiet. We follow the travails of local charity leader, Julie Alford, as she juggles her tireless work with local youths and their families, with her unremitting efforts to raise funding for the charity. Through this charity, Holt Youth Project, we come to know three families with young children, struggling to balance meagre budgets while coping with disability and severe illness among the parents. The first family we meet lives in a very isolated location. As Christmas approaches we meet Dad, Rob, shifting logs for the home fire in sub-zero temeratures: the house has only one wood burner for all its heating and hot water provision and there are only a couple of double-glazed rooms. Rob is full-time carer for his long-term ill wife Mel. Uncomplaining, he talks about buying Christmas presents for his eleven year old son Ben via weekly payment catalogues, standing the extra cost because being wholly reliant on benefits he can find no way to find the money in a lump sum. Next are the Whitbreads: Dad John is an amputee and has been found unfit for work. His two daughters Victoria, 10, and Francesca, 8, inevitably have to share the caring role with their Mum, Angela (though we don’t meet Angela). The endearingly wise older girl says she has a very short list for Santa, and we feel this is a very mature act of kindness towards her parents. John talks of wanting another supermarket in the town because the existing one really only caters for the well-off people in town. Our third family are stoically facing the impending loss of Mum, Nikki, to cancer. They are otherwise a very average nuclear family, but will be plunged into financial turmoil when Nikki dies, at the same time as having to bear severe emotional distress. Nikki and Dad, Gareth, are doing their best to prepare Amy, 10, and Lucy, 8, for the inevitable.
Genre
Social Work; Health and Social Care

How to cite this record

The Open University, "Living With Poverty". https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/ou/search/index.php/prog/83542 (Accessed 10 Jan 2025)