Children are sleeping on the floor or sharing mouldy or soiled beds, because families cannot afford to replace broken beds and mattresses or provide adequate bedding to counter cold and damp, new research has found.
The children’s charity Barnardo’s, which describes the situation as “bed poverty”, commissioned a YouGov survey, conducted in August, of 1049 parents with children under 18 and 1013 children (aged 8-17) in Great Britain.
The findings were published on Thursday in the charity’s report, No crib for a bed: The impact of the cost of living crisis on bed poverty, in which frontline staff give countless examples of families having to prioritise essentials such as food, heating, and electricity over replacing mouldy bedding or fixing a rotten bed.
Hundreds of thousands of children suffer bed poverty, says @barnardos https://t.co/3Aly66SKr6
— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) September 29, 2023