by Keith Richmond
SAVE the Children, a charity more used to raising money in Britain to help impoverished children abroad, has reported a “crisis” for families here at home.
It says that rising unemployment, a sharp rise in the price of food and problems in the housing market as the number of repossessions hits an all-time high, have all contributed to a “perfect storm” of factors to hit families in Britain.
Speaking as the charity launched a new project to distribute cash grants of £100 to £200 to some of this country’s poorest families, Colette Marshall, director of UK programmes, said: “Families are at crisis point. This project is designed to help those who are most in need to cope. It will provide vital help to a small number of families but we cannot do this alone. The Government has to help.”
Save the Children says the grants – to about 1,000 families – are a “demonstration to the government of what can be done” and warned that a failure to act will leave “millions of children unprotected from poverty” as the credit crunch-inspired recession gets worse.
The warning from Save the Children came in a week when another British -based international aid charity, Oxfam, reported that life for “the fifth of the UK’s population living in poverty” is set Close to Home: UK Poverty and the Economic Downturn, also calls on the Government to do more to help the poor.
