³ÉÈËÂÛ̳

Kathleen Kerridge had to leave her job after suffering a heart attack, shortly afterwards her husband was made redundant and then the land lord sold their house. She says "we'd be better off financially if he [my husband] didn't work, however I think to be able to respect ourselves it's not an option, I'd rather struggle that little bit more and be able to say we're a working family".

She feeds her family of six on around £45 a week, and has learned to sew in order to make her daughter's school uniform.

Mrs Kerridge said the reality of being 'working poor' is "eating plain boiled rice and pretending to like it so the children don’t know there's other food except for what's on their plates".

She is one of an estimated three million people in the UK classed as the working poor.

The mum of four children (aged 10, 16, 18 and 20), wrote a blog post about Jamie Oliver and other celebrity chefs not understanding modern day poverty, which has had more than 1.3million hits.

This clip is originally from 5 live Daily on Wednesday 11 March 2015.

Show less