His mum Clare Wildego has three more children – Ryan, 11, Summer, five, and
Lewis, one – and she admits she occasionally steals nappies and borrows from
mums at the school gate to pay for formula milk.
She is ashamed – but with her husband Ryan out of a job there is no way out
of the grinding cycle of poverty trapping them.
“I am a proud mum,” says Clare, 30.“Last year I was offered a tenner by a mum
at the school gate to provide milk for Lewis and at first I refused. Eventually
I had to take it.
“It has got so bad that on occasions I have been to the supermarket, ripped
open a pack of nappies and gone into the changing room to change Lewis.
"I put the pack back, but that way I don’t have to buy any. It’s terrible. I
have always tried to do the right thing but you have no option.
“Charlie has definitely been affected. He’s not developed as he should. He’s
very unsettled.
"I remember another time he asked for an ice-cream and I lost my temper. I
couldn’t help it. We had no money. So now I feel really bad.
“His big brother Ryan will always ask nervously if he can go in the kitchen
to get something to eat.
"It’s OK now but there were times when I had to tell them they couldn’t just
go into the kitchen.”
Yesterday we exclusively revealed the results of a poll showing more than 85%
of teachers have seen an increase in children turning up to school hungry and
relying heavily on school lunches.
This is something Ryan, who displays amazing maturity when he talks about
growing up in poverty, knows well.
“I’ve had to have smaller breakfasts,” he says. “Dinner wasn’t very good as
well.
"I used to feel light-headed when I went to bed. Lunch was the only meal that
was OK because I was at school.
“When I was seven we were in a hostel, and that was definitely the worst
time. There were other families down the corridor making a lot of noise.”
Now, the family live in a poky flat in a decaying tower block in Peckham,
South London.
Ryan shares a cramped, clutter-strewn room with little brother Charlie and
sister Summer.
Children’s toys and dirty clothes are piled up in the hallway which leads to
a dark, damp concrete stairwell.
When Clare explains how the family has been in and out of temporary
accommodation, it goes some way to explaining the chaos.
Charlie has spent much of his short life stuffing his few toys into a case
while his family are shunted between homes.
In another box room Lewis crawls back and forth on a narrow strip of unused
floor between his parents’ bed and his cot.
“We are having problems because my husband Ryan could only get a temporary
job,” Clare explains.
“He worked in the parks for the council but it came to an end last week. He’s
been looking for a permanent job all the time but nothing is available.
“This Government has changed the rules so you lose your benefits as soon as
you start working. But when that job stops you have to wait six weeks for
benefits to start again.
“If we have any money, as soon as it comes in one hand it’s gone from the
other because we have to pay back people who lent us money.
"We are always in arrears. We walk because we can’t afford buses.
“We want to work, believe me. I realise people have to scrimp and save, that
is as it should be, but I don’t think David Cameron cares about people like us.
We’re not the only ones and it’s not fair.”
Respected charity the National Children’s Bureau (NCB) says struggling
families in exist in a state of “social apartheid”.
Its recent report, called Greater Expectations, found there are 1.5 million
more children growing up in poverty in Britain now than there were 40 years
ago.
While the privileged few like Cameron and Chancellor George Osborne excel
thanks to posh public schools, children from poor backgrounds fall behind.
“A child from a disadvantaged background is still far less likely to achieve
a good level of development at age four, to achieve well at school age 11 and do
well in their GCSEs at 16 compared to a child from the most well-off
backgrounds,” says the NCB.
“A comparison with other developed nations shows that a lack of ambition for
children growing up in this country causes children to suffer unecessarily and
risks these patterns of disadvantage becoming permanent features of our
society.”
He said: “They are very often first-time offenders and they are not doing
this to sell the stuff on.
"The stuff they talk about is food stuff. It is very often meat and cheese
they steal for them and their family.”
Having grown up in tough circumstances themselves, Charlie’s parents wanted
their children to enjoy opportunities they never had. That now seems a
far-fetched dream.
Tough: Kelly Brooke is home schooling her son
Alfie
And they are hardly alone. In Burnley, Lancashire, six-year-old Alfie
Feeley’s own hardship is just as damaging to his future.
Every morning he forlornly waves his older brother and sister off to school.
Alfie is desperate to join them, but he can’t.
For the last eight months, his parents Colin Feeley and Kelly Brooke have
been teaching him at home because they could no longer afford the £80-a-week bus
fares to their children’s old school more than three miles away.
They had to withdraw the three children from that school, hoping to get them
all into another one within walking distance from their home on the outskirts of
Burnley. But while Jack, nine, and seven-year-old Autumn got places, Alfie did
not.
The youngster says: “It’s not fair that Jack and Autumn get to go to school
and I don’t. They got new uniforms and I didn’t. I just want to be with all the
other children.”
Mum Kelly, 29, explains: “We moved and the only school we could get them all
into was 3.2 miles away. It was fine when Colin was working but once he lost his
job we just couldn’t get the bus fares together.
“We had no choice but to take them out of that school. We never imagined we
would be in this position where there isn’t a school place for Alfie local to
us.
“We don’t really know what we are doing. At school he would be taught by
highly trained people with degrees. Not only is he missing his education, he is
missing out on the social side of school and playing with children his own
age.”
Kelly adds: “Me and Colin do without so that the kids don’t. We never buy
each other birthday and Christmas presents – it’s more important that the kids
get what they want. I can’t remember the last time I bought myself some new
clothes.”
With the cost of living rising in parallel with swingeing cuts, there are
many more children like Charlie and Alfie.
As Charlie and Summer run around outside their grubby building, a squabble
breaks out over a bike left on its side in an overgrown patch of grass.
But neither wants to go back inside.
They dread once again being confined to their own play area – a two-metre
square concrete balcony covered in netting.
