When a crisis reaches crisis point

Have you ever had that feeling where you’re reading or writing something and you see a word so many times that it no longer has any meaning? Despite the fact that it is absolutely 100% real and it’s in the dictionary, you’ve read it so often that what it’s actually supposed to mean is lost. I feel a bit like that with the word crisis at the moment. We’ve had a Covid crisis. The NHS is in crisis. There’s a crisis in the Ukraine. We’re living through a climate crisis. It’s common to hear of a crisis of confidence in our leaders, whether that be on an international, national or local basis.

The crisis that everyone’s talking about at the moment, however, is the cost-of-living crisis. Any time you turn on the news or scroll through Twitter, there are discussions about skyrocketing energy and food prices, a rise in National Insurance, exorbitant fuel costs and a general increase in the cost of everyday items, with little to no increase in wages or benefits to balance this out. There is no doubt that this is a crisis of the most serious and significant order. But it’s nothing new.

Commentators, journalists, and politicians blame Brexit and Covid. While these are, of course, contributing factors, our poorest families were on their knees long before that. As an organisation, we’ve seen first-hand for years the devastating impact that poverty has had not only on individuals, but on whole communities. Add a pandemic and an exit from the EU into that already extremely precarious situation, and those who were already suffering are pushed further into the depths of despair, while families who teetered around the poverty line are plunged into a financial state that they had sleepless nights over but ultimately hoped would never come.

Because it's all very well telling people to submit meter readings to their energy suppliers before 31^st March to avoid having to pay higher costs – if you’re on a pre-paid meter, you’re not afforded that luxury. That last tenner you’ve managed to put in to give the kids a bath and make their dinner just goes down even quicker than it did before. It doesn’t matter if the supermarket’s cheapest beans are 13p and a loaf is 45p if you don’t have 58p, or enough money in your meter to be able to heat up the beans and toast the bread. Put simply, you can’t tighten your belt if there’s no belt left.

‘Heat or eat’ should categorically never be a choice, but it’s a phrase that we’ve heard for longer than we ever should have. For years, parents have skipped meals so that their kids can eat or made games out of how many layers they put on before bed so they don’t have to turn the heating on. The provision of universal free meals within schools and early years settings has of course been welcomed, but it is nothing short of shameful that in a wealthy country, in the 21^st century, there are children who are only guaranteed one hot meal per day.

Unfortunately, there’s no silver bullet which will ‘fix’ years of systematic poverty. Fundamentally, we need to seriously look at and address the root cause of poverty which always has been, and always will be, inequality. And of course, we absolutely have to place the highest value – both financially and societally - on the work that happens in the early years. It is here that positive experiences in a nurturing, supportive environment can absolutely shape a child’s future and providing the best building blocks for the rest of their lives.