Charity tackling furniture poverty among London’s children launches campaign with Shoreditch installation

The billboard aims to draw attention to furniture poverty. Photograph: The Childhood Trust

A major Shoreditch installation aims to shed light on the effects of furniture poverty on children in the capital.

The Childhood Trust’s billboard is on display on the Great Eastern Art Wall for the month of March, highlighting the effects of poverty on London’s young people.

It reads: “Every child deserves a place to sleep peacefully, play freely, learn independently and grow.

“The Childhood Trust transforms the bedrooms of London children living in poverty to bring those spaces to life”.

One in three children in London – more than 700,000 – live in poverty, according to the charity. Hackney’s child poverty rate is the second-highest of any borough in the city – the Citizen previously reported as many as 64 per cent of children in Hackney are living in income poverty.

Josephine McCartney, CEO of The Children’s Trust, told the Citizen: “Lots of people have no concept of the level of poverty that children experience in London. We have the highest rates in the country”.

Thanks to London’s ever-increasing cost of living, many families struggling to make ends meet earn a good salary on paper and are therefore not entitled to benefits, McCartney continued.

Hackney has one of the highest rates of childhood poverty in London. Photograph: The Childhood Trust

According to research by the charity, basic living costs set Londoners back, on average, £30,000. £40,000 is the minimum salary needed by most families just to cover household bills, feed and clothe children, and cover transport.

McCartney said many of the markers of poverty are things people may not think about. “For a lot of families, they don’t have enough money to furnish their council houses.

“Often, if you have children, you’ll be sharing a bed or you’ll be sleeping on a mattress on the floor. You won’t have a wardrobe. You won’t have a desk to do your homework.

“You probably won’t have money for a hot breakfast in the morning. If you live outside of the borough where your school is – and often that happens with families, because they get moved around – you will struggle to get to school. So you’re often walking to school in the winter.

“You may not have warm clothing, and you may not have the right clothing for the summer. We’re talking about basics, things that other people take for granted”.

McCartney hopes the billboard will shine a light on the hidden impact of poverty and encourage people to act.

“I hope that it raises awareness of the issue of furniture poverty in London”, she added. “If nothing else, it raises the profile.

“A byproduct of that is that some people who see it, who can afford to support us, will [do so]. That means that we can continue to provide our services to those families that really need it.

“If people support us, then we can continue to deliver the services that we do on a daily basis to those families that need us the most”.

The launch of the billboard coincides with the charity’s ‘Housed not Homed’ report, which has shed light on the impact furniture poverty can have on children. Find out more here.