Channel 4 Dispatches Childhood Poverty

I confess to having avoided watching this programme. We've had a tough week with bereavement and very ill loved one's so I gave it a miss.
I've read the reviews though and anyone reading the papers, living in a community, walking in our towns and cities can't miss the growing rise in homelessness, in the nee for food banks. Every supermarket has a place to leave food to be distributed.
Universal Credit is a national disaster. I despair for the children whose only proper meal is their school dinner. All the primary school teachers I know tell of children arriving at school very hungry.
It's too easy to demonise their parents. We seem to be drifting into Dickensian approaches to 'the deserving and undeserving poor'.
I started working with children and families in the late 1970's. Things are much worse now for those on the margins.

It's worse than the 1950's !!

Marilla, our names are very similar, but we haven't had any confusion regarding our posts, so far.
I've just watched this programme and I just feel so very, very sad. That young lass coming out of school with her exam results - the only one that she'd passed had been 'Food'. That might speak for itself. She was trying so very hard to revise, her mum buying books from eBay.
The children at the beginning of the programme saying that they knew there wasn't enough food and the little girl saying she worried about it.
The only thing we can do is to donate to the Foodbank (which I do, each week), but it's not enough, is it? ?

I agree, no child in this day and age should be burdened with such worries

The family walking home in the dark carrying their bags of food for 2 miles was so sad.
The children never complained and were like little adults before their time. Children shouldn’t be worrying about food and heating while at school. They should be enjoying their childhood.

It was sad. It was also interesting that mental ill-health was the central factor in most of these stories of poverty in families. Improving mental health services must become a priority because the spin-offs of poor services are so great.