Families can’t afford vacations
This is how children’s summer holidays can look like this summer. Photo: Jessica Gow/TT
– Children use words that we have not heard before, such as electricity prices and food prices, says Seiran Alipour, who is a counselor at Bri’s physical reception in Gothenburg.
She tells P4 Gothenburg that more and more children are calling Bri’s national helpline. They feel lonely and say they cannot afford to participate in activities. Some tell how they have started to pay or take shorter showers.
The children’s financial worries are not taken out of thin air.
According to a survey conducted by Arbetet, 40 percent of Swedes have had to reduce or cancel their holidays due to inflation. Laila Khalidy is one of them. She is a single mother of two daughters, aged 12 and 13.
Must have two jobs
She tells Arbetet that she needs to have two jobs to make ends meet.
– You don’t know how much the tomatoes will cost then, or the electricity. Everything has become more expensive, so I prioritize saving now, so we have money this winter.
Given the forecasts for food prices and inflation, Khalidy’s concerns are justified.
According to Tapio Salonen, professor of social work at Malmö University, it is important that the municipality has free activities for children and teenagers when holiday plans are cancelled. Salonen believes that it can be decisive for the path choices the children make.
If the children do not have any meaningful activities, there is a risk that they end up in unwanted contexts, for example with gangs and in crime. When Seiran Alipour from Bris talks to the children who call in, she emphasizes that the finances are the adults’ responsibility, and that they should not worry about taking responsibility.
Free foosball camp
This is the welfare country Sweden 2023.
Holidays are cancelled, mothers have to work double jobs and children call Bris to ask how they can help with the electricity bill.
There are debaters who think that poverty and crime should be solved with oatmeal and harsher punishments. Putting 12-year-olds behind bars is a solution.
Another is to offer free summer vacation activities. It is also an investment that gives results today and tomorrow. A football camp or a trip to the bath house with lunch or breakfast can change lives.
In this way, the summer holidays in 2023 can be the year one learned to dribble or jump from the tian at the bath house. Not like the summer when you joined a gang. Or started pawning to help mom pay the electricity bill.