Over a million kids live in hygiene poverty. But teachers don't always know what to say

Some children at the Blackpool primary school where Sarah Smith works “sleep in their school uniforms”.

“A child [might have to] get themselves up because mum or dad are either unable to – because they’re poorly with mental health or other conditions – or there’s a neglect issue,” the executive head teacher told Big Issue.

“We’ve had some of our kids sleep in their uniforms in the hope they can get out and get gone in the morning.”

Others wear the same kit for days at a time – “maybe the family can’t afford to buy washing powder or the electricity to run the machine” – or don’t have access to deodorant, shampoo, soap or toothpaste.

These children are among more than 1.1 million people across the UK living in hygiene poverty: the inability to afford basic products needed to stay clean.

Read more:

• ‘I begged food bank workers for body wash for my children’: The bleak reality of hygiene poverty in the UK
• ‘I feel judged for being smelly’: Millions can’t afford to wash their clothes as hygiene poverty soars
• Where to find free toiletries, period products and nappies in the UK

Research released last year found a 68% year-on-year increase in state school teachers reporting daily instances of pupils’ families being unable to afford hygiene items. The study, by charity The Hygiene Bank and laundry brand smol, also found that children experiencing hygiene poverty are 85% more likely to be bullied and 75% more likely to underperform academically.

“Children very much say it how it is,” says Smith. “You stink.”

“There’s no ‘do you know that Mrs. Lee has got a couple of shirts in the cupboard that you could have?’ They’re just going to say ‘there’s a horrible smell’.”

Where children can be brutally blunt, adults often stay silent. A new study by laundry brand smol’s Suds in Schools programme found that four in five (82%) state school teachers find it difficult to raise the issue of hygiene with pupils. Nearly six in 10 (59%) have never received training on how to identify or support children affected by hygiene poverty.

It can be a “tricky area” for teachers, says developmental neuroscientist professor Sam Wass, who warns that fear of causing embarrassment can lead to inaction.

“Teachers are seeing and noticing children presenting a little bit differently in their class, but they’re not raising it because they feel awkward because they’re worried about saying the wrong thing,” he tells Big Issue.

“This type of thing can have such a massive impact on all aspects of a child’s kind of pathway through school.”

Help is at hand. The National Headteachers Association has partnered with smol to produce new guidance for schools tackling hygiene poverty. The guide is the first to offer a “professional script” to help staff raise concerns sensitively.

Wass is a co-author of the report. While practical measures such as hygiene packs and in-school laundrettes matter, he says they only work if children feel able to access them.

“it’s a combination of both ‘software’ and ‘hardware’. So it’s putting the practical stuff in place as much as we can, but then also putting the software, the knowledge and the confidence in how to deal with it.”

The guide includes advice on responding when a child asks for help, managing peer comments, and framing hygiene poverty in the classroom.

Smith’s school already does this – for example, if teachers have to give a child a bag of clothes washed in the school laundrette, they shouldn’t “make a song and dance of it.”

“Hang it quietly on their peg,” Smith says.  

“We need to recognise how difficult it is for these children. It is not their fault. They have not chosen this life. They have been brought into it.”

Her Blackpool school sits in one of the “top 10 most deprived wards in the country”.  Hygiene poverty is not about apathy, instead reflecting the difficult choices endured by poorer families.

“Now, traditionally, when you think about deprived places, you would maybe think that, ‘oh, it’s the great unwashed’. That’s kind of the phrase that springs to mind. And it’s not that at all,” she says. “It is simply that these people our community, not all of them, but some of them, cannot afford to do the basics.”

“That deprivation factor creates is a challenge for families on a daily basis about how they spend their money.”

Despite its impact, hygiene poverty is mostly absent from national policy. The government’s child poverty strategy, published in December, made no reference to it. Campaigners from The Hygiene Bank have said that relatively modest interventions could make a difference: removing VAT from soap, for example, could save families £20–£40 a year.

Sadly, the problem is only getting bigger.

“I have been a teacher for 30 years,” Smith said. “I genuinely think that the gap between the haves and the have nots in our in our society is broader than ever.”

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