Helping families thrive by giving children A Warm Welcome
Sophie Burr, Project Development Co-ordinator at National Energy Action, says our crisis fund has made a huge difference to children, including those fleeing domestic abuse.
Having a child is a blessing, but it can hugely impact a household’s finances. Our clients who are parents regularly tell us they go without to provide hot food for their children or only heat their child’s bedroom. Across the UK, over 6 million children are growing up in cold homes.
At National Energy Action, over half of our clients have dependent children. We provide information, advice and guidance to everyone, but have specific projects helping different groups. ‘A Warm Welcome’ is a programme that specifically works with families who are expecting or have a child under five. Alongside providing advice, the crisis fund is a key part and has allowed us to give vital funding directly to parents in the North East, the South of England and also all London boroughs.
Unlike some other schemes, A Warm Welcome had a very simple referral process. We worked with frontline workers such as practitioners within nurseries or anyone dealing with parents with under-fives or pregnant women. And then they were able to refer into us to receive items such as bedding or soft furnishings. As a fuel poverty charity, we chose items that would help make homes warmer, but also tailored to a household’s specific needs.
One of the households we helped included a mother and a toddler. A moth infestation in their carpet left them with bare concrete floors. They had no money for rugs or curtains. Their house was full of cold draughts, which led to higher heating use and rising anxiety. From the crisis fund, we were able to provide rugs and curtains to reduce heat loss and create a safe play space. It meant that a mother no longer had to worry while her child was learning to walk and stumbling onto a concrete floor.
We’ve been able to provide items that have an immediate impact on their homes, such as dehumidifiers and heated clothes dryers. These allow us to help stabilise the life of that family and ensure that the children are growing up in a home that won’t cause or make any health conditions worse.
Another client wasn’t eligible to receive Universal Credit but was so close to the poverty line that the cost of energy bills meant that she was unable to top up frequently. Every pound was spent trying to make sure that the lights stayed on for her family. We helped them get some basic kitchen appliances to make cooking more affordable.
We also support clients in temporary accommodation, like women who’ve experienced domestic abuse. After fleeing the family home, they often have no clothes, no bedding, nothing. Small items, like the children having a pair of shoes or a coat to wear when they go back to school, make a big difference.
The programme allows us to provide a holistic service. The referral might state someone needs help with an energy bill, but when we actually speak to them, we discover it’s a whole package. Then we don’t just deal with one thing, we deal with all of them.
The programme allows us to spend £75 on each client, and despite not being a huge sum, it can be life-changing. It allows us to purchase the small items like blankets or heated airers, but it also opens the door to more funding. Many families are then able to get £147 of energy vouchers and help with debt support. Sometimes we can support them with applications for other funding like a new bed or cot.
Our work on protecting families from fuel poverty continues. Thank you to SGN and Northern Gas Networks for supporting A Warm Welcome. We’ve learnt some fantastic lessons about tailoring advice to families, which we can take forward into future projects.