A Slice of Bread and Butter
The voice of The Bread and Butter Thing - with stories from the frontline of the cost of living crisis from one of the UK's leading food charities.
A Slice of Bread and Butter
Breaking Bread: Inside Hillside High's Community Impact
Helen Thornton welcomes us into Hillside High School in Bootle, where the stark reality of educational inequality meets unwavering community spirit. As both a teacher and Bread and Butter Thing volunteer, Helen offers a compassionate, ground-level perspective on the challenges facing students from diverse backgrounds in this vibrant school near Liverpool.
"I've got students who the only hot meal they get is here at school," Helen reveals, before describing how the school has become a lifeline for many families. With over 30 languages spoken and students from Nigeria, the Philippines, Ukraine, and the Middle East, Hillside High embodies the multicultural richness of this port city community. Yet amid this diversity lies a troubling divide between those who have and those who struggle.
What makes this conversation particularly powerful is Helen's practical insights into solutions that work. The school provides free uniforms to all Year 7 students—not just those who ask for help—eliminating stigma while ensuring every child starts secondary school with dignity. They create opportunities for cultural exchange, helping refugee children share their heritage while exposing all students to experiences beyond their immediate environment.
The digital divide emerges as perhaps the most pressing modern challenge. As education increasingly moves online, Helen questions why we expect children to complete digital homework without ensuring universal access to devices and internet connectivity. "Wi-Fi should be free for everybody," she argues, comparing it to essential utilities like water—especially when government services themselves are now "digital by default."
Throughout our conversation, Helen returns to a crucial insight: working families often struggle the most. With rising costs but stagnant wages, parents who are "working harder because they're working" face additional burdens of transportation, childcare, and limited time. It's a sobering reminder that poverty isn't simply about unemployment, but about an economic system that fails to value essential work appropriately.
Join us for this thought-provoking conversation about educational equity, community resilience, and practical solutions that make a difference. Share your thoughts with us at podcast@breadandbutterthing.org or find your nearest hub on our website if you'd benefit from our affordable food club.
Welcome back to A Slice of Bread and Butter with Vic and Mark from the Bread and Butter Thing. We're a charity that delivers affordable food to the heart of struggling neighbourhoods to help nourish communities and act as a catalyst for change.
Speaker 2:We provide access to a nutritious, affordable range of food, which means our members can save money on their shopping, feed the families healthily, as well as access other support too, right in the heart of their communities.
Speaker 1:And this is where we share a slice of life with somebody involved in bread and butter and hear about how they connect with us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm looking forward to this one because this one's Helen, and what a diamond geezer. So I went out in the summer holidays to Bootle to her school. Let's have a listen.
Speaker 3:Hi, my name is Helen Thornton and I am a teacher at Hillside High School. I am a volunteer at our hub for this bread and butter thing and I am also a customer of this bread and butter thing.
Speaker 2:Oh, this bread and butter thing. So I get so many different variations of the name of the bread and butter thing. So I get bread and butter project, bread and butter shop. My autocorrect does bread and bitter thong. That's quite worrying. So where are we at the moment?
Speaker 1:My autocorrect does bread and bitter thong. That's quite worrying.
Speaker 2:So where are we at the moment? We're in your school.
Speaker 3:So we're in Bootle, which is obviously it's in Merseyside. It's very close to Liverpool. We share a border with the city and we have students that come to our school, who are some of them in Liverpool addresses and some of them in Bootle addresses.
Speaker 2:On the border, then yes. What's it like? Tell us about the area.
Speaker 3:Our community is very, very mixed. If anybody saw what happened after the Southport attacks, one of the places where we had a very big flare point was County Road, two streets away from where we are now. So we've got students who come from quite affluent backgrounds who have a nice experience, and we have students that grow up in poverty. We have a policy where we give free school uniform to every year seven, which is why we're in the meeting room we're in now, because the other one is literally filled with rails ready for our new starters in September.
Speaker 3:I've got students who the only hot meal that they get is here at school. A number of them are signed up now to receive the bags each Wednesday and some of the staff are as well. I used to teach in Leicester in an ex-colliery town where there was very, very little money and this is equally as difficult for the children and difficult for the families, but a hugely genuine sense of community. The majority of the people that work for the Hulboo Volunteer are our grandparents and we've got some of the people that are part of what we call the team around the school, so that's people who are doing all the extra things that we need them for our children.
Speaker 2:We're in the middle of the summer holidays, the school holidays, but we're in in school. So who's here? Who's volunteering?
Speaker 3:So we have a whole mix. So we've got some people who are from the local authority, we've got some grandparents, we've got some teachers, we've got a teaching assistant I think it's all women today as well, actually. So we do have a couple of chaps that also volunteer. One of them works with Everton in the community, which is the football club, who are a huge support for the school, and so are Liverpool. We get a lot out of both of the football clubs for our children, which is wonderful.
Speaker 2:It's nice that they both do it. I thought there might be rivalry in charity as well.
Speaker 3:We get very different things from them. In what I've seen, everton are very much in the school, on the ground. They work with some of our more troubled children, and Liverpool are offering us the opportunity for the students to go out of school and do things at another venue and, obviously, building that cultural capital for them, which is super important.
Speaker 2:It's something.
Speaker 3:I hear a lot in schools Tell me about cultural capital.
Speaker 3:So cultural capital is relating to when our children have had exposure to things beyond their normal life.
Speaker 3:So it would be expecting children to be aware of what museums are available, knowing about art galleries, the cinema, the theatre, music. But it's this idea that our kids see things beyond the normal curriculum and it gives people an opportunity to see things that they maybe didn't know about their city because they have maybe a disconnect in their grandparents or great-grandparents and for some people who've come to the city and made it their home in our school we've got over 30 languages being spoken because we are a port city and Bootle itself has a lot of families that come and settle here from all over the world, and currently in my tutor group I've got children from Nigeria, the Philippines. Obviously we've got some students from Liverpool and the area around and got some Ukrainian refugees, and we've got kids who've come in from Bulgaria, Romania. Obviously we've now got some children who've come in from the Middle East. So we've got a whole range of students that bring different cultural knowledge with them as well and we try and make sure that we share that.
Speaker 2:It's a great melting pot.
Speaker 3:It is. It's fantastic, and last year what was really lovely was that all of our EAL that's English as an Additional Language children. They wanted to share their culture with us, so they were each asked to set up a booth in the hall and they were asked if they wanted to dress in national dress. They were given the opportunity to bring in some food that would be traditional for them. I found it incredibly rewarding to see all of our children explaining where their background was and where they were from and the different languages that they speak, and the food sampling went down very well.
Speaker 2:I'm sure I think the cultural capital from events like that is enormous, but is there a gap in cultural capital for kids that struggle to get by versus, as you put it, the more affluent kids?
Speaker 3:I think there is because there's a pressure on children where they've got financial hardship in their family to not ask for things. Transport isn't terribly expensive in the city it's two pounds for a ticket to go anywhere and during the holidays the children can get on the trains for a pound and they can get into the city quite cheaply. But very often there's a reliance on older children to look after younger children. There's a reliance on them to maybe get things ready for the evening meal and very often they'll be doing things like the housework and making sure that the laundry's done all the things that I'm expected to do but as an adult you know that you're signing up for that.
Speaker 2:And I'm guessing that's because mum and dad are at work.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, the majority of the members of our hub are working families who are still just finding it very, very hard to make ends meet. Why do you think that is? I think it's really hard. I think there's a higher expectation on what a basic budget should actually now be able to cover. I think there's an expectation that every child's going to have a mobile phone, and that wasn't something that I had when I was at school and that is an added cost.
Speaker 2:And I know you were lucky to get a bike.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. My bike was bought by my parents and grandparents combined.
Speaker 2:I'm youngest of four. I've got hand-me-downs.
Speaker 3:Well, it was the only new bike I ever got. I will say that until I was buying my own bike. Yeah, I think, like I said, I mean some of our children will have new bikes and some of our children will have lovely new phones, and a lot of them are on contract. But you will see children who say, well, I've got my mum's old phone or my older brother or sister's old phone. Clothing is more expensive.
Speaker 3:I agree with school uniform. I struggle with the fact that the badge needs to be on everything and I am agreeing with the things that are being changed to say two items and no more. When I was at school peak, it wasn't very glamorous and now it's like a replica football shirt almost in terms of the way it's produced. And those things are expensive they are. But I will say we do have a fund here at school and we do help our families out with things like that as well. There also won't be a teacher in the school that you could meet who wouldn't say that they've bought something for children in their classes, because we've got a very high percentage of students that are on the pupil premium, which means that they do get a little bit of extra funding and we do make sure that extra funding does go towards their needs.
Speaker 2:Just going back to what you were talking about with phones, etc. Because, as you say, it's almost like an additional cost nowadays and people don't recognise that it is an additional cost. People expect children to do homework digitally. How easy is that?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm a maths teacher. Our homework is entirely online and I've been arguing for the last year and have actually supplemented my online homework with paper-based homework, because some of the children that come from our poorest families are also our hardest-working children. They know, and I thoroughly believe, that education is a route out, especially if you're not going to make it as a you know premiership footballer, which is the big desire here, both girls and boys. I will say that I want our children to be able to access things, so we have a learning resource centre here every evening, every break time and every lunchtime so students can come in if they need help to access the homework, if they need help to be able to complete the homework that is provided to them.
Speaker 3:It worries me that the gap gets bigger. I mean, before COVID, they thought that we would be low 40 years in terms of catching up our least provided for with our most provided for children in terms of the education gap, and that's now gone out to well over 40 years again. Because if you can imagine a family of three or four children at home, because if you can imagine a family of three or four children at home where there might be a mobile phone and a tablet or a laptop, and you've got four children that are all expected to be in lessons. They can't all be on the lessons at the same time.
Speaker 2:And so for some of our children. Yeah, the technology is an issue. Vic often accuses me of government bashing, and it's not Labour government or Tory government, it's just generally government for me. But as a kid I was given textbooks and exercise books by the state comp that I went to, and if you're expected to use a laptop for homework, surely it ought to be in the budget to give them a laptop.
Speaker 3:I would love to see every child be given an appropriate electronic device, be it a tablet or a fold phone or a laptop.
Speaker 2:If we are saying, as a country, we're going to educate people, then surely we have to give them the right tools to get educated.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely, and the thing that needs to go hand in hand with that is the fact that they need the facilities at home to be able to connect, and that's the other thing that I worry about. I know that some of my children have come in and they've said, oh, the wi-fi was down. And I always say to them, because I've been through this myself, it is going to happen and it might be happening for all the right reasons. It might be happening for different reasons could be financial, could be. You know, you're just not on a very good connection. The reality of the situation is Wi-Fi should be free for everybody, but most definitely the areas that they should prioritise.
Speaker 2:Definitely going out there now, helen, because, let's face it, we pay for our water.
Speaker 3:I know, but I think I don't think that's right either. I think Wi-Fi is that important. Now you look at lifestyle and the number of places that are saying we won't take cash anymore and you're thinking well, there are some people who have to live by cash because they don't have the facility for credit, they don't have a debit card that is reliable. They want to do what we refer to as the envelopes, where they've put the money aside for each of their expenses and they know how much they've got left for each day or each week of the year. You know I'm not talking about families that are going to get themselves into debt at Christmas either.
Speaker 3:We've already had those conversations with a lot of our families. The one that was a real eye-opener for me was talking about our holidays. Just before we broke, we had two conversations. The first one was are you going on holiday? And most of my children were not. And then the second one was if you had an unlimited budget, where would you go? And one of my children said I'd just like to get on an aeroplane, because I've never been on an aeroplane, and he didn't care where it went. He'd said probably Benidorm because he'd heard good things. And in the current situation that we're in with a lot of our families, I can see that that's going to be more common as we go forward.
Speaker 2:Take you back to cultural capital.
Speaker 3:It does indeed. And the chance to travel, which a lot of our children haven't had, we do take them down to London. They do go to the theatre. They went to see Oliver because that was one of the productions that we've put on this year, and our school productions are incredible and some of our children find that that is the thing that they are absolutely best at, and why would we not want to give them that opportunity? But yeah, again, you know, the chance to travel, something that they wouldn't normally have seen.
Speaker 1:So what did you think of Hillside High?
Speaker 2:It was the first time I'd ever been to Hillside High and I loved it. Just brilliant. Everything that's going on. The way they have just threaded themselves into the community and you just listen to Helen should be a politician. Frankly, the way she was such an advocate for her kids, her school, the community, the area she was just brilliant. And when you meet somebody like Helen you just suddenly look positively in everything around the hub as well, and I think that influences a fascinating magic sprinkle on everything that they do there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I thought it was. I thought Helen was fantastic in really carefully putting across some of the issues that people face, like the level of understanding and empathy that Helen has is fantastic. But not on a soapbox, not getting all righteous about things. Just here's the facts Life is hard. And then all of the amazing initiatives that they try and do to make sure that kids don't struggle like free uniform.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this has come across before. We've seen other charities doing uniform clubs and all the rest of it Exchanges yeah. Wouldn't it be brilliant if it was a government initiative or a local authority initiative rather than again? This shouldn't be something that people rely on for charity, because it should be. You know, there is a central unit that collects all the old uniform, washes it, recycles it back into the schools.
Speaker 1:But what I liked about that was it's free uniform for all year sevens. Yeah, the uniform exchange is if you need it. So there's still a stigma, yeah.
Speaker 2:And it shouldn't be, and it shouldn't be.
Speaker 1:So just by leveling the playing field and going guys, you can feel great in your new blazer. Off you go.
Speaker 2:No, you're bang on. I stand corrected because it's again one of those things of destigmatizing things. It's just a way of equalizing everything, isn't it?
Speaker 1:and that's really important, even when you simplify uniform so that you know that ridiculously expensive blazer isn't part of it or whatever yeah, but you know, as a new kid, a new parent, like with a kid going to high school, it's the PE kit, it's yeah, it's everything, and I don't think it's possible now to just send people in. You know, the third hand me down Like you were talking about this. I don't think you know the brand police in a different way would the kids would just get bullied at school. So I think parents are in an impossible position where they've got to spend money possibly where they wouldn't want to, just so that the kids fit in.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I loved it. And again, working working families. It just keeps coming back. Yeah, the majority of people that are struggling. Why is it people are not waking up to this fact that working families are the ones that are really, really struggling right now?
Speaker 1:just everything's more expensive.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and salaries haven't cost of living's gone up, yeah.
Speaker 1:Wages haven't kept up, yeah fact but okay, so let's go out there a little bit. If you're on benefit, you've got time to put into. You know, doing a big long cook that takes hours or doing things a long way, that might be cheaper. When you're working you've got all of your transport to work and back. You've got to go out every day. You've got to juggle the kids in the. In the holidays the kids have got to have child care. It's not like they can be at home. So you're working harder because you're working just generally and I don't think people factor in the cost of working.
Speaker 2:Yeah, on top of everything else, and time is a limited resource, even more so when you're working yeah, for sure. So the other interesting thing for me was digital devices yes, for a minute there, I thought you were going to say digital divide, but this is a remedy yeah, totally, it's interesting, isn't it?
Speaker 1:because and you may have even said this when I went to school, it was like an exercise book, a paper to you right yeah, yeah, you know, maybe you had to provide your own pen but it wasn wasn't like it wasn't much.
Speaker 2:Only if you wanted a schmancy one. Oh really, yeah, yeah, we got three pens. Oh wow, but one. You got one pen, wow, okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then now all of the work's online. But there's just an expectation.
Speaker 2:The materials that you need to do that work. You've got them. That's a massive change and that is what needs fixing, and that is just like the uniforms. As you start secondary school, give them the kit yeah because how on earth are you supposed to be able to have a level playing field if you can't access your homework?
Speaker 2:yeah, for sure yeah so it wasn't just that it was like free wi-fi as well. Right, because obviously it's just like water. Every house should have wi-fi. Why is it new houses are built without wi-fi? They shouldn't be yeah it should all be installed.
Speaker 1:Full fiber should be in there so I wouldn't say new houses, I I'd say social houses.
Speaker 2:So you think free Wi-Fi should be means tested no?
Speaker 1:Nice challenge. I just think new houses are out of reach for everybody.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I get that.
Speaker 3:So if you say new, houses, that's fair, totally fair.
Speaker 2:It shouldn't just be new houses, but it should be just like the water mains right. There should be free, accessible Wi-Fifi, just like water. In every house in england there should be a basic and if you want better, but it should be good enough for everybody. But if you want something better so that 16 kids can stream on a playstation 5 all at once, then you pay for it, right, yeah, there is a belt and braces. Government issue wi-Fi.
Speaker 1:And that makes sense, though, because all of benefits is done on, like the website. Now, You're not really going into the job centre, are you? It's all done online. Yeah, council tax.
Speaker 2:GPs.
Speaker 1:GPs.
Speaker 2:NHS All of it's online.
Speaker 1:So a lot of our universal services that everybody needs is now digital by default.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So why aren't we supporting people to access them?
Speaker 2:Totally what. I can't believe that I did say that my autocorrect comes up with a bit of thong.
Speaker 1:No, that was an overshare, for sure, wow.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Your typing must be really bad.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because I've never had that yeah, but it does show everybody that bread and butter thing, their bread and butter project, the bread and butter charity. Is it just too long? The name?
Speaker 1:you made it you're allowed an opinion, you know so in some respects I think it's really out like really stand out yeah and it's quite memorable, but then a lot of people make their own story up about why we're called it yeah, and then really we just tend to call it bread and butter we do yeah and I think most people do, and I think you probably put them under pressure when you go out and chat to them and like, oh, I've got to say its full name and then get it wrong because actually day in and day out it's just oh, I'm off to bread and butter yeah.
Speaker 2:Do you know why? I would much prefer it if everybody just called it bread and butter, because it that's what you're asking for a rebrand, no no, because it's too expensive. Fair. But if we can all just say that that's the pet name, bread and butter, yeah, yeah, that'll do Okay.
Speaker 1:Why did you call it the bread and butter thing?
Speaker 2:Mark it wasn't originally so I originally called it Heathfield Drive, which is a street in Brookfield council estate in Preston, where I was born. It was personal to me. But then I had a couple of people that were mentoring me at the beginning of setting up bread and butter, and one of them was quite senior in marketing in one of the big corporate banks and they just kind of said that's a bit rubbish, isn't it? It's very selfish and personal, don't you think, mark?
Speaker 2:so it was brutal, but working with them for a couple of months. Eventually I came up with bread and butter, so it it did work. Yeah, if people liked the name. Well, we're a bit too far gone.
Speaker 1:We're a bit far gone for that, yeah, yeah, at least it's unique.
Speaker 2:Yep, which is probably why no one can.
Speaker 1:Get it right. So if you'd like to know more about the bread and butter thing and what we get up to, you can find us at team tbbt, on instagram, twitter, tiktok, linkedin or online at breadandbutterthingorg and if you have any feedback or thoughts on the podcast or you want to come and have an atter, drop us an email at podcast at breadandbutterthingorg lastly, we're always open to new members at all of our hubs.
Speaker 1:If you or someone you know would benefit from our affordable food club, you can find your nearest hub on the becoming member page or the member section of the website and please do all those things that podcast always asks you to do.
Speaker 2:Like us, subscribe to us, leave us a review and share us with your friends and chat about us on social. See you next time. See you next time.
