We began Covid Realities, the sister project, by sharing our truth. We grew together as a community, and always the team were responsive. Our ground rules emerged fairly quickly and now form the cornerstone of this powerful community.
For many of us, our engagement with the Changing Realities project is borne out of a shared desire to reach out and find others who ‘get’ what we were feeling and experiencing. Our sharing in this safe space and on the platform developed for us, has become a rich, raw and endlessly surprising, social archive.
This night before Downing Street is a thousand Christmas Eves. It’s a dream come true. I will never forget how we got here, or underestimate the power of community in pushing for change. This is how we change our realities.
Jo Barker-Marsh is a participant of the Changing Realities project.
Opening the doors of Downing Street to families matters if we want to see an end to child poverty
A colleague said to me today that the door of No 10 Downing Street is the most famous door in the world. Whether that’s the case or not, stepping through it with Changing Realities felt both momentous and timely.
Changing Realities is a coalition of almost 200 parents and carers living on a low-income, researchers at the universities of York and Salford, and Child Poverty Action Group. We have been working together for almost five years to document what life is really like in poverty – and to push for change – during first a pandemic and now the cost of living crisis.
We have seen four prime ministers since the project started, and we’ve seen massive upheaval – and across it all parents have stood firm, documenting the everyday harms done by poverty. They have spoken out, challenging common misconceptions and pushing for a policy approach that works with the expertise that comes with experience.
In July 2024, the Labour government committed to introducing the first UK-wide child poverty strategy in over seven years. This commitment is an important one; and just as important has been their readiness to engage directly with parents and children facing poverty; and Changing Realities has a key role to play here – meeting with politicians and officials, feeding in real-time evidence, and – this week – meeting with key policymakers at No 10 Downing Street.
Crossing that famous threshold mattered symbolically. It was a vital sign that this government is ready to actually listen and learn from parents facing poverty and hardship, and that they are open to having the hard conversations about what action is most urgently needed and why.
All too often, people in poverty face stigma and censure; their contributions are derided whether explicitly or implicitly, with a narrative about supporting ‘hard working families’ seeming to exclude those whose work involves parenting, caring, volunteering, managing life as a disabled person.
And there is some irony that the week that these doors opened to us was the same week that the government published their ‘Get Britain Working’ white paper; which includes some positive changes; but was sadly wrapped up in a all too familiar derisory rhetoric of the need to fix what Keir Starmer was quoted as calling for an end to the ‘blight’ of benefits Britain.
This is why the opening of the doors also matters in policy terms: Labour has a big job on its hand if it is to tackle what its ministers rightly describe as the ‘moral stain’ of child poverty. And it is a job that they cannot do alone; they need to work with people with firsthand experiences of poverty who can share exactly why and where change is needed; and who can help build a public argument about the need to act; and act decisively.
The meeting this week was just the beginning of this, and Changing Realties stands ready to be part of a conversation about change – and to do the work required to make a real difference in driving rates of child poverty down. But this week gave me hope, and it’s hope that I hope the government will show is well-placed. The alternative is almost unimaginable.
Ruth Patrick is a professor at the University of York and a researcher who leads the Changing Realities programme.
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