'A Year Like No Other - Life on a Low Income during COVID-19' was published September 2022

By Ruth Patrick, Maddy Power, Kayleigh Garthwaite, Jim Kaufman, Geoff Page, Katie Pybus & Covid Realities Participants

A Year Like No Other tells the stories of families living on a low income during the COVID-19 pandemic and exposes the ways that pre-existing inequalities, insecurities and hardships were amplified during the pandemic for families who were already in poverty, as well as those pushed into poverty by the economic fallout it created.

Drawing on the Covid Realities research programme, and developed in partnership with parents and carers, it explores experiences of home-schooling, social security receipt and government, community and charitable support. This book sets out all that is wrong with the status quo, while also offering a powerful agenda for change.

Please join us online as we launch this book on Wednesday 19th October, celebrating the work of parents and carers involved in Covid Realities, and discussing why change is now needed more than ever.

Watch the book launch

“Humane, powerful, important, compelling. Here are the real experts speaking about poverty and hardship – those who have experienced and lived through it. If I could, I’d give a copy to every MP, policy maker and journalist in the country.” Kerry Hudson, author of Lowborn

“A vital and lasting record of poverty and the pandemic. Superbly presented, in places the voices are almost too painful to read. Government failure writ large and now all getting much worse.” Jonathan Bradshaw, Emeritus Professor

“To understand what millions of people have gone through since the pandemic began, this book and its profoundly human voices are where you need to start.” John Harris, The Guardian

You can order A Year Like No Other online here