Schools are regularly referring homeless children to food banks, driving them to classes and washing their clothes, according to research.
A survey conducted by the housing charity Shelter and NASUWT, also known as the Teachers’ Union, asked 11,000 teachers about their experiences of working with children living in temporary accommodation.
There are now a record 175,025 children in temporary housing in England, according to the most recent government figures. Many families affected are living in B&Bs, hostels and overcrowded flats.
Most teachers who responded said homeless children had attended their school in the last year.
Almost half of respondents – 49% – said that their school regularly referred homeless families to food banks.
Families are often placed in temporary accommodation miles away from their children’s schools, and 41% of teachers said staff had helped homeless children get to classes. A quarter of teachers said their school regularly washed school uniforms for families living in temporary housing without adequate laundry facilities.
The vast majority of those surveyed said homelessness had an impact on children’s attendance, performance in assessments and mental health.
Alicia Samuels, 39, has been living in temporary accommodation in Tower Hamlets, east London, since she was pregnant with her son Aeon, who is now six.
She previously lived in her father’s council house but became homeless when he died. She said that since then she has had five temporary homes, some of which did not have laundry facilities.
Samuels said that the one-bedroom flat she shares with Aeon is damp and infested with rodents. She added that Aeon had developed hearing problems because of fluid in his ear resulting from the mould.
She said: “I’ve told the school about the fluid in Aeon’s ear. I don’t want him to get sanctioned for not paying attention, if his mind goes somewhere else because he can’t hear. He’s very shy and he doesn’t speak up in school much.
“He would excel so much more if he had more space for himself. I think he would find more confidence and independence.”
Samuels said she has avoided inviting other children to playdates with Aeon because she is “so embarrassed” by their living situation.
She added: “It gets me emotional … he goes round his friends’ houses and they have their own room and a playroom. Aeon doesn’t have his own space. He has a lot of anxiety. He has trouble sleeping because of the accommodation.”
Matt Morden, the headteacher of Surrey Square primary school in Walworth, south London, said a quarter of his pupils were living in temporary accommodation. “Many of the children have asthma or sickle cell [disease], so they are much more vulnerable, especially when the accommodation is damp, or the heating is not working,” he said.
“They are getting chest infections and colds because of the conditions they are living in, which isn’t helping their attendance.
“How can you be expected to come into school and learn if you haven’t slept properly, or you haven’t had heating [and] it’s freezing?”
Sarah Elliott, the chief executive of Shelter, said: “The government must ramp up the delivery of genuinely affordable social rent homes by setting a national target for delivery. We need 90,000 social homes a year for 10 years.”
Matt Wrack, NASUWT general secretary, said: “Teachers and school leaders are pulling out all the stops to help mitigate the effects of homelessness on these pupils and their families, but they cannot fix our national housing crisis. The government needs to go further and faster to make sure that no child’s opportunities in life are blighted by the lack of a safe and secure place to call home.”
