Children’s charity highlights plight of families unable to afford heating

IN many family homes across Omagh district this morning, children will be emerging from bed covers to see their white breath before them and sheets of ice inside their windows.

As temperatures continue to plummet below zero, and bank accounts do the same, these desperate conditions of cold and hunger are increasingly becoming the everyday reality for more and more local children.

Those of us who thought that unheated houses, empty cupboards and threadbare clothes were something that could be consigned to Ireland’s past have, sadly, been proven mistaken.

For far from being the plight of those who gone before us, or, indeed, the pitiful preserve of people who live on far-off shores less fortunate than our own, these are the circumstances that pervade throughout our own towns and villages at this very moment.

One woman whose work prevents her from ever minimising the magnitude of the scale of child poverty locally is Patricia McAroe – a family support practitioner with Action For Children’s Early Intervention Family Support Service.

This Christmas, Patricia is appealing for people to be generous, and to the work that Action For Children do within our local community, especially by donating to their Secret Santa Campaign.

“My role with Action For Children is frontline, working directly with families and stepping into their homes to support them,” began Patricia, “threfore, you have no choice but to see things for exactly what they are.”

Patricia works in Omagh and its surrounding areas, where she travels door-to-door, visiting house-to-house, speaking with families who need help, and trying to meet whatever needs they have.

“My work takes me through people’s front doors, into the hearts of their homes,” explained Patricia.

“What I meet nowadays is more heartbreaking than anything I have encountered in all my time working with Action For Children,” Patricia despaired.

In her 13-and-a-half years working with Action For Children, one might expect that Patricia to have become accustomed, numbed, or anesthetized to the suffering that goes on behind local closed doors.

But this is not the case.

“Almost every day I walk away from a house feeling heartbroken because of the way that people are living. Unless you see it with your own eyes, you’d struggle to believe that families are living in these conditions.

“Truth be told, sometimes it is more like surviving than living.”

Patricia detailed a number of examples to illustrate the level of hardship that confronts parents and children within our communities.

“Only the other day,” said Patricia, “a colleague of mine went into a house and, making conversation, asked a ten-year-old-girl what she wanted for Christmas.

“The young girl, turning to my colleague, replied, “‘Some oil so Mummy doesn’t have to worry about keeping us warm while we’re home from school for Christmas.”

In another incident, Patricia called to a house to find the family huddled together on the sofa beneath the warmth of a single electric blanket.

“I asked if they were unable to afford heating, and the mother explained that she had been buying drums when she could afford them,” said Patricia.

“It turned out the woman was suffering from pleurisy – a serious lung condition, and it was being exacerbated by the cold.

“I left the house, got in touch with the office, and we were able to get her a tank of oil.”

Child poverty is an insidious and unjust issue that has disgraced every society throughout history.

However, Patricia said that the extent and severity of the child poverty that quietly afflicts our community today would astound those who never have to look it in the eye.

“Honestly, it would scare people. But we are here to help alleviate it. The thing is, the amount of help we provide is directly dependant on the amount of donations we receive,”

Action For Children’s Secret Santa Campaign helps the most vulnerable children in our community by ensuring that they wake up on Christmas Day to find a warm house, a filled fridge, and something waiting under the tree.

l To become a Secret Santa for Action for Children visit iamsanta.org.uk/hope.

l Alternatively, call into their office on Campsie, Omagh. The address is 2A Holmview Ave, Omagh BT79 0AH