Cost Of Inequality Story 14

Hello. Hi. My name is Hamid Khan, and I want to share some of the challenges for carers and for elderly people in terms of cost of living crisis and impact on carers and the members they care for. One of the biggest struggle is that it's getting colder

Heating and lighting is extremely expensive. A £300 a month bills are now coming at 4 £5500. You can see a massive difference difference

Food cost is tripled almost. That's having a big impact on the elderly and on carers. As income is not increasing, benefits are not going high

Pensions are not go not increasing align with the cost of living and in the cost of living is out of control. Also, there's a lot of suffering and silence where people don't talk about what they're struggling with because they feel a stigma with the cost of, uh to say that I'm struggling and it takes a lot of courage. I mean, I find particularly the elderly people, like my mom and dad's generation

It's almost in their time was a stigma to be poor, so even now when they will struggle, they would not say they are struggling because it's almost like it's not something that you own up to that is causing a lot of vulnerabilities for the elderly, South Asian communities and for other communities as well. Also, I would like to share something very quickly is that the cost of living is not just about living crisis. It's also increasing inequalities and dividing the rich and poor because the inequalities in the poorer community are getting more because they can't afford to maintain good health or to even meet basic standards, which is having a knock on effect on their long term health

As we know, cold houses create damp houses, damp houses, then create asthma and various other arthritis and joint problems and other health related illnesses to do with poor standard of living. So my strength would be that by having resilience to understand that it's something that we've all got to deal with together, and at the same time we've got to find solutions to the problems. One of the things that people can do is share warm spaces, share food, so if you know that your neighbours are are are struggling and you have spare food that you're not gonna have you pass it on to the neighbours

I think that we need to create a culture which says it's OK to accept food and items from each other in the community, and it's nothing to feel embarrassed about. We need to also create an educational awareness that not all brand products are quality products. Sometimes it's just the labels, and it's OK to buy unbranded stuff because sometimes it's just as good as the branded stuff

So cost of living crisis is around. We are going through it. But through resilience, we're gonna get through it

Thank you..