"Voices of Experience-The cost of living crisis"
Parent Action and HEAR Equality
Voices of Experience-The cost of living crisis
In Spring and summer 2024 HEAR members Parent Action (a project of Citizens UK) worked with HEAR to record the real-life experiences of parents and families they work with on the impact of rising inflation and the cost of living crisis. They conducted a series of 5 interviews with their members, focusing particularly on how inflation has impacted on their household budgets in respect of energy costs, food shopping and other essentials, and important costs such as broadband, data and phone calls, to capture digital poverty. Participants were also asked if they had needed to access a food bank and how they felt about this.
4 of the participants were single women with one or more dependent children and who were currently not working. One of these had a young baby and was living in a hostel. The 5th participant was an older single woman who worked part-time and lived with her adult daughter who was also working part-time and her daughter’s young child.
All participants were thanked with £50 shopping vouchers using funds awarded to HEAR by Trust for London.
This project was not intended to be representative research, rather to allow the real voices of Parent Action members to be heard above the quantities of statistics available.
“Now well we don't put the light on that much, now that it's quite light until late; cooking, sometimes I don't even cook, other times I will cook but I will make it last 3 days, depending on what it is, so that saves me food, saves me energy, you've got to do it you know”
-Our parent's voice
Find out more about Parent Action: www.parentaction.org.uk
Find out more about HEAR: www.hearequality.org.uk