By Alexia Murphy, CEO at Depaul UK
I heard something on the breakfast news this week that shook me to the core and so I feel compelled to write about it today.
A statistic released this week on breakfast news was a new and harrowing one. Even I, who have been working in the sector for many years and am all too familiar with the shocking figures that reflect the grim state of our housing situation today, was floored by this announcement.
This new research shows that 74 children in the UK who died between April 2019 and March 2024, had possible cause of death on their death certificate as “Living in temporary accommodation”, and 54 of these children were under the age of one. That’s 74 beautiful humans who will never get the chance to grow, to love and to realise their potential.
These children are dying at the rate of at least one per month because they are living in inadequate temporary accommodation. This is absolutely shocking and reminiscent of the Victorian era, not modern-day Britain. Tragically, the need for temporary accommodation is growing at an alarming rate, with more than 123,000 households currently without a home.
Living in temporary accommodation – which is anything that isn’t a permanent home and is organised by the local authority – can expose children to overcrowding and unsatisfactory sleeping arrangements such as sleeping in a car seat, on a sofa, or in bed with adults/siblings, all of which can increase the risk of suffocation or cot death.
Families are often given badly converted properties such as unused offices to live in. It can also include hotels, hostels, caravans, holiday parks, flats and houses. Some of these properties will have issues of condensation, damp and mould, and poor sanitation caused by cooking, washing and drying laundry in the same room as a family sleeps in.
Sadly, temporary accommodation is an accident waiting to happen. A two-year-old girl fell from a second-floor window in such a place near to my home. She had climbed onto furniture and onto a window that had no safety lock. Thankfully she survived, but it breaks my heart to think that any parent should have to face such a terrifying ordeal simply because they are poor.
We know too well the impact of homelessness on children – poor educational attainment due to reduced attendance because of travel costs; impaired cognitive abilities due to stress and poor nutrition; increased likelihood of a mental health diagnosis, and ultimately a greater chance of becoming homeless as an adult.
These compelling reasons are why we run our nationwide schools’ programme – helping students to understand how homelessness happens and where they can seek help if it does. It’s also why we train professionals to recognise at-risk children and support them. It’s absolutely our duty to be powerful advocates for the children being left behind.
To turn things around for the thousands of children living in dismal situations like the ones I have described above, the Government needs to increase funding for local authorities and start building new affordable housing so that every child can grow up in the comfort and safety of their own home. We know that far too much money is being spent on temporary accommodation because of a shortage of social housing – arguably at least as much money as is needed to build new social housing. This needs to change and we need a swift about-turn so that we never again see the devastating child death statistics revealed this week. We must use our position to sound the bell.
