Theme 1 - Wrong development - UK families in poverty

Save the Children launches campaign to help UK families in poverty

 

Abridged version from http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/sep/05/save-the-children-uk-campaign?INTCMP=SRCH

 

The international aid charity Save the Children – best known for its work with starving youngsters in Africa – has launched its first domestic fundraising appeal, asking the public to dip into their pockets to help UK families plunged into poverty by cuts and the recession.

The charity is seeking to raise £500,000 to help children across the UK, many from low-paid working families, who it says are going without hot meals, new shoes and winter clothes, and missing out on school trips, toys and treats because their parents cannot afford the rising cost of living.

While the appeal target is modest compared to Save the Children's international humanitarian appeals, the campaign will be seen as a symbolically significant attack on what the charity says is the coalition's failure to tackle mounting poverty, hardship and inequality in the UK.

Launching its appeal, which bears the slogan “It Shouldn't Happen Here”, the charity said: "It is shocking to think that in the UK in 2012, families are being forced to miss out on essentials like food or take on crippling debts just to meet everyday living costs."

Save the Children plans to spend money raised on its Eat, Sleep, Learn, Play programme, which gives cookers, beds and other essential household items to families living in poverty, and its Fast scheme, which helps low-income parents to provide at-home educational support to their children.

Although families below the poverty line (£17,000 a year household income) are worst hit, working families on "modest" household incomes are increasingly struggling to make ends meet as they attempt to cope with shrinking incomes, soaring food and energy costs, and cuts to welfare benefits and public services, says the report.

Save the Children is calling on ministers to encourage more employers to adopt the living wage currently set at between £7.20 and £8.30 an hour, provide extra childcare support for low-income parents, and modify the planned universal credit welfare system to allow parents to keep more of their earnings before benefits are withdrawn. The charity's Shouldn't Happen Here report is the second high-profile study by an international aid charity to focus on domestic poverty in recent months. Oxfam's Perfect Storm, published in June, said that cuts and rising living costs were threatening to return the UK to levels of inequality not seen since Victorian times. An Oxfam spokesman said: "We have never done an appeal in the UK, and we should never have to do an appeal in the UK, but you can never rule it out”.

Read the text and answer the following questions (justify your answers by quoting the text) 1.       What is the aim of this fundraising appeal? 2.       Why is the appeal so special? 3.       What is the poverty line in the UK? 4.       What are the main problems faced by the poorer families? 5.       What measures the charity would like the government to take?