Sunday, June 8, 2014

Britain's breadline kids: Up to 5 million children will be living in poverty by 2020

New research by Oxfam has revealed the true extent of the amount of British children living in poverty, with families taking drastic measures



Skint: Niomi is one of 3.5 million children living in poverty in the UK


The true plight of Breadline Britain’s destitute children is exposed today.

A shocking 3.5 million youngsters are living in poverty in this country - and experts predict that figure will soar to 5 million by 2020.

In a devastating development, more and more desperate mothers are turning to prostitution in a bid to put food on the table.

Sick and cancer-stricken children are forced to queue up at food banks to stave off their hunger. And parents clinging on to jobs with zero hours contracts don’t know what money they’ll have from one week to the next.

Medical experts recently wrote an open letter to David Cameron slamming the rise in food poverty, saying families “are not earning enough money to meet their most basic nutritional needs” and that “the welfare system is increasingly failing to provide a robust line of defence against hunger.”

The British Medical Journal revealed how malnutrition in England has almost doubled in fives. It said: “This has all the signs of a public health emergency that could go unrecognised until it is too late. Malnutrition in children is particularly worrying because exposures during sensitive periods can have lifelong effects.”


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