A THREAD. The potential pitfalls of middle class / upper class assumptions during the pandemic in terms strategies to supporting vulnerable children is something I’ve been mulling over lately. I read a book of surveys by Maud Pember-Reeves which highlights this issue... 1/9

Children experiencing poverty quite often had nutritional deficiencies. The m/c criticised this and suggested things like using milk in porridge instead of water... the w/c were well aware milk would have been better, but could not afford it. M/c lens means wrong solution 2/9

Looking at their problems with a m/c view and strategies using their own lens, and not the lens of w/c. I can see through well intentioned and well meaning strategies, similar issues. Here are some things I’ve been thinking about 3/9

1. Ingredients instead of vouchers.Assumption of what people eat, time to cook from scratch,can afford gas/elec to do it,not thinking that older children might be cooking for siblings if parents working,lack of cultural foods and dietary foods.This is why vouchers work better 4/9

2. Laptop and home learning expenses. Cost of electricity to charge and run laptops, at the expense of perhaps other bills being able to be paid or food. How do we identify this? Welfare calls might not reveal it due to fear of sharing circumstances 5/9

3. Attendance to live lessons. As above - electricity, broadband costs, sibling home school/parent remote working and strain on broadband/space to work, caring for younger siblings. Welfare calls again might not identify this. 6/9

4. Wellbeing strategies. ‘Take a walk’, ‘go sit in your garden for 15 mins’. Not everyone has a garden/yard, not everyone lives in areas where it’s safe to walk alone, built up areas might not be wellbeing supportive in terms of traffic/noise 7/9

5. Lack of access to internet in areas such as rural areas.Many parts of Britain still do not have the same broadband infrastructure which puts cohorts of children at a disadvantage due to lack of access/slow speed internet, therefore things like live lessons might not work 8/9

6. Laptops as a silver bullet. Laptops are great, but if a child has not accessed one before, how digitally literate are they? They might be app literate, but we can’t assume that a laptop alone will be the panacea. Support with digital literacy needed 9/9

@RosannaHume mentioned a good one too. Costs of heating the home during these months. This is a worrying cost that many will be facing