by Jenny Fulton
When people talk about the cost of living they talk about fuel poverty and food poverty, but what does that actually mean to the average person?
I am gonna give you all a little insight to my life in the middle of the cost-of-living crisis.
I get paid every fortnight which is every second Tuesday.
This has always made it difficult for me to plan and budget, skills I had to learn from scratch again on my recovery journey.
I spend over 35% of my benefits on fuel.
They say if you spend over 10% on fuel, you’re living in fuel poverty.
So, what is my situation then??
And even though I put in over a third of my benefit to gas and electric I spend approx three days before I get paid with no heating or hot water.
I run out of gas.
Usually, my gas cuts out on the Saturday night and I am left until the Tuesday morning to cope with this.
This happens every single fortnight.
Cost of Living Effects on NHS
The effects on me are far-reaching.
I have chronic psoriasis.
Not having hot water means I cannot clean my skin properly.
I use boiled kettles, but I need several to wash my skin and even though I do try to keep up with this routine wither I have hot water or not, there is nothing more depressing and challenging than facing a freezing cold bathroom and trying to be thorough with my skincare two or three times a day.
My skin gets worse over winter, and I am now battling daily infections and escalating painful weeping sores, so I have been referred to dermatology.
A prime example of how the cost of living directly impacts the NHS.
So, I need to wash my skin at least twice a day to put all the creams and lotions on it and this is no easy task.
All those boiled kettles only add to my electricity bill.
This continually impacts my mental health and well-being.
I also use the kettle to do dishes and to clean.
Again, adding pounds to my electric bill.
Then I use a small electric fan heater in the living room.
This is really expensive to run and I am only willing to put it on for twenty minutes at a time.
But as soon as you turn it off the room cools down really quickly.
After 20 minutes it is freezing again.
My house is becoming cold, damp and very uninviting.
Unhoused Mind
Consider my circumstances; I am someone who has an unhoused mind* and am trying to gain the tools and skills to create a home.
This is not the environment for me to do this.
*An unhoused mind is where a person has no skills or tools or experience in creating a home for themselves.
They struggle to create a place where they feel safe and settled, a base for them to go to relax and recuperate from the world.
Somewhere they can find peace and safety.
Trying to change a mindset from high alert and feeling vulnerable and unsafe to being comfortable, relaxed and at peace.
It’s a work in progress for me.
I have lived like this before but had some understanding of why I did.
My chronic addiction saw me without heating, hot water and even electricity but the need to feed my habit always took precedence over these things.
I am now over three years clean and sober.
I do not understand why I am having to live like this now.
I hear people say they cannot afford take-aways or to eat out due to the cost of living.
Well for me and so many others, because over 35% of my benefits goes on fuel, I am struggling to spend anywhere near the amount I need to feed myself and my partner Steph good food every day.
I cannot afford a big shop every fortnight.
So, with choices limited, I have got into the very bad habit of shopping daily.
In Our Basket
Often Steph and I meet after our days are done and count out how much money we have between us before we decide what we can afford to eat that night.
This means I cannot plan meals for the week.
And when we wait until 6.30pm or 7pm to see how much money we have, the last thing you want to do is go shop, then prepare a dinner.
So, we are depending more and more on poor and unsubstantial meals.
Pot noodles, cheap microwave dinners, beans on toast, are becoming the norm.
Steph and I spent many years hungry, choosing our habits over eating, so it is very easy to slip back into old ways of going to bed hungry rather than facing the supermarkets at night with pennies in my pocket and feeling panicky and sick with anxiety.
Taking so much time as I go round the aisles adding up the cost of my shopping.
The feeling of panic as I go through the tills, I find it very distressing to ask to put things back when I don’t have enough cash to cover my shopping, or I have added it up wrong.
Recently I got home at 6pm.
Steph and I put what money we had together, and it came to £10.
That was to buy dinners, snacks etc for three days.
However, we needed washing powder – a necessity as my skin is so impacted with trying to cope with my lack of washing amenities that I can only wear two specific pairs of baggy
trousers which need to be washed every other day.
We needed salt.
My partner is already extremely thin.
He is naturally thin but because of the years he spent starving himself, choosing his addiction over food, it has left him on the tipping point of being extremely underweight.
It may not seem important or even healthy to some, but to buy food and not have salt is just going to encourage him to not eat at all.
Washing up liquid – we need to wash our dishes as we only have four plates and four bowls.
It’s enough for us if we can wash them.
And lastly, we needed deodorant.
So, this took the £10 down to £3 for food for three days.
This again leads to buying noodles or cheap micro meals or toast and beans or soup.
Or what is happening more and more, we are just not bothering to source dinner at all.
Feeling hungry going to bed, trying to get to sleep, was a thing I thought I had put behind me in life.
Good Support
It is not just lack of heating, hot water or food that is the issue, it is the negative impact these have on my ability to keep myself and my partner healthy, both physically and mentally.
The lack of being able to plan is very unsettling for us.
Living without care for our welfare is a role we can very easily slip back into, and this could easily lead us back to chaotic and unhealthy lifestyles.
I am extremely fortunate to have an amazing team to support me and who carry me when I need it.
However, for most in my position they don’t.
They turn to their doctors, to hospitals to community-led projects and right now these amenities are looking just as vulnerable as the people turning to them.
I know you all must be feeling the cost-of-living crisis both personally and professionally.
It is important we share our stories and keep sharing to get those who can make change happen, to listen and take notice.
Photography by members of Chance2Change, in partnership with Inclusive Images and Clydesider Creative, as part of a project commissioned by the Queen’s Nursing Institute Scotland
and funded by the Burdett Trust for Nursing.
Chance2Change is a peer support group, which has also taken up an expert reference role (lived experience) for the Scottish Government Primary Care Health Inequalities Development
Group.
Chance2Change is based in Drumchapel, Glasgow and was first established in 2017 through a QNIS small grant awarded to a local practice nurse.
In 2023 the group was commissioned by QNIS to undertake photojournalism work exploring health inequalities.
The topics included homelessness, grief, trauma, early deprivation and neglect, addiction, poverty, and physical ill health.
These topics were all part of a professional development programme for community nurses and midwives, and Chance2Change have produced some thought-provoking images that are helping us better communicate our work.