Rural deprivation

Monday, 26th October 2009

A friend is a dinner lady at a village school five miles away. After service was over for the day, and the children in the playground, she left her kitchen and, on returning a few minutes later, found a small boy foraging in the bin. He had half a bread roll in his hand. She shooed him out but then thought to make some enquiries. Gradually the story emerged. He and his younger sister were often said by classmates to put bits of leftover food in their pockets and to beg shares of break-time snacks. Then people reported having milk taken from doorsteps and before long, one of the children was caught running away with a full bottle.

There was a simple explanation. The children were hungry. They were sent out without breakfast or any snack in their pockets, got free school dinner and nothing for the rest of the day except a few biscuits or a bag of crisps. They were deprived in many other ways and eventually taken into care. Well, that is a familiar story of inadequate and neglectful, if not downright abusive, parents, but it shocked my rural neighbourhood because you simply do not expect to find any children today actually hungry and suffering, as these were, the physical effects of malnutrition.

Rural poverty and deprivation are often well concealed but living among beautiful trees and fields with fresh air all around does not make the lack of money any easier to bear.

I am never surprised when I read that, for example, poverty in a county like Cornwall is among the worst in the country. It is the same at the other end of Britain, in rural Cumbria, and the lack of so many facilities on the doorstep makes it all the harder. There are no supermarkets in the country, you need a car to get to the nearest which may be anything from 10 to 40 miles away, so those without their own transport rely on others with it and the rest can go hang. Yes, there are buses – perhaps two or three times a week, one out, one back, and you lug your shopping, your children, your Zimmer frame, on those.

Otherwise, you depend on the nearest small shop and that may be several miles away, and small shops have poor choice and are expensive. Some areas still have a mobile shop once or twice a week. Those have even less choice and things cost even more.

Everything revolves round having transport – visits to the doctor, the clinic, the dentist, the council offices - let alone any place of entertainment. The aim of any young person is to get their own wheels but often they cannot afford to run a car let alone tax and insure it so they buy a banger and drive it anyway, risking all. They get away with it too because rural policemen are rare as hens teeth. But that’s a a story for another day.

Compensations? Of course there are compensations. Many people round here, who work for low wages out in all weathers picking sprouts and peas and onions, getting arthritis and bad backs and old before they are sixty, wouldn’t swap their lives for urban ones. But it is so easy to see the prosperity, to assume everyone is rosy-cheeked and well fed, to miss the drug epidemic among rural teenagers, the bleakness of being over seventy and living alone in a remote village in winter, when it is dark from four until eight and there are no lighted shops and buses, no passers by, nothing but the television for a bit of brightness and chat and company. Old people in the country can be almost invisible, even if, in a friendly village such as this people will always look out for their neighbours. And let us not even start on the cost of heating older houses. I know plenty of people who simply do not switch on at all, except in the greatest cold, such as we had last winter.

Rural poverty is alive and around us every day. But it still comes as a shock to hear of children going into the school kitchens to raid the bins for leftover bread rolls.

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Naomi Muse

October 27th, 2009 9:44am Report this comment

A good one! A serious and sad subject though.

The poverty happens overtly at the other end of the age range too.

As many rural villages provide a lovely life for many people it is very sad when a reality check hits someone as they reach retirement age.

Those who have sufficient money and a living spouse, carry on living where they have been happy for many years. But those who live alone think long and hard about whether they could and should move to a local town or village with a doctor, shop, library and public transport.

The onset of thinking realistically of the times when driving one's own car might have to stop is the agent of change.

This also means changing ones neighbours, neighbourhood and the village activities that bind the community into a valuable mutually supporting network.

Villages work well but need local infrastructure provided so that neither the very young nor those approaching the third phase of life feel, or actually are, threatened to the point that they have to cut their village life short and build a new life somewhere else.

Anthony Lenaghan

October 27th, 2009 3:20pm Report this comment

Very sad story indeed. And a welcome reminder that rural Britain, as the class warriors on the left would have it, is not all fox hunting and "Tory toffs".

48 Crash

October 28th, 2009 11:18am Report this comment

Growing up in a seaside, holiday destination town we had the additional joy of watching rich people turn up every summer and treat as either invisible or a source of amusement. There was a general assumption that we couldn't speak English or understand the speech of others, and our general air of scruffiness and jumble-sale chic marked us out even if we kept quiet. It was a lovely reminder, every year, that others had money and that we didn't. At least when the 'visitors' went away we were all fairly equally skint - a certain esprit-de-poverty helps lessen the impact - but each summer was painful.

Snowman

October 28th, 2009 8:11pm Report this comment

Sad story, but sadder still that not one of the myriad of agencies that are supposed to watch for cases like this has spotted it.

Paul B

October 29th, 2009 5:54pm Report this comment

The price of rural public transport is prohibitive as well. A return journey from Hook Norton to Banbury, the nearest large town, for my daughter is approx £5.00.Its approx 8 miles either way.
This is where the Internet and online shopping can prove a boon to those living in remote communities, although I accept delivery charges have to be paid and some persons are unable to master computers.

It has to asked though Susan, whilst excepting the children you mention were indeed starving and undoubtedly neglected, what were their parents (parents) doing with their money, either wages or benefit. Although I fully accept its tough for those on low wages and/or benefit, there is no need for children to go without food and become hungry if the parent gets their priorities correct.I expect this is the same whether the child lives in a rural or urban area. Its the problem of the underclass, benefit dependency, that is the huge question that confronts us all in the UK in the early part of the century. I have a great deal of faith that in DC and IDS the right men are in the right place at the right time to confront and put into place policies which will go some way to eradicating the problem, although its going to take years for their policies to work. Both are caring & understanding, but have the pragmatic approach that those on the left just don`t have- who believe its ok just to tax and give the money away inefficiently. I realise others disagree and believe food tokens and other such degrading 19th century workhouse ideas should be implemented, but that's not the way forward in the UK i wish to live in.