Mr Motivator is lobbying the government to tackle the number of children in the UK who have no bed of their own as Barnardo\u2019s reveals demand for furniture from struggling families has surged by 40% in the last year.<\/p>\n
The children\u2019s charity said beds had become\u201clike a luxury item\u201d as the war in Iran threatens to exacerbate cost of living pressures<\/a>.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, TV and online fitness coach Mr Motivator, real name Derrick Evans, who lives in Greater Manchester, is urging government to treat \u201cbed poverty\u201d as a national crisis and include it in child poverty planning.<\/p>\n The former GMTV star said: \u201cI have always hated the fact that it\u2019s merged into poverty in general, which means it gets lost.<\/p>\n \u201cBeds can end up at the bottom of the list for families in a desperate position, and the consequences are enormous. Not having a proper bed or getting a good night\u2019s sleep affects children\u2019s health, their mood, their learning ability, behaviour and emotional stability.\u201d<\/p>\n In the first quarter of 2025, 187 households accessed Barnardo\u2019s\u2019 services for \u201cessential furniture\u201d. But from January to 16 March this year, 261 households came to the charity for beds, cots, tables and chairs, sofas, food and window coverings \u2013 a rise of nearly 40%.<\/p>\n In 2023, polling commissioned by Barnardo\u2019s and YouGov found 226,000 families in the UK had children sharing a bed<\/a> with an adult or sibling, because of financial pressures.<\/p>\n Ruth Welford, Barnardo\u2019s head of special projects, said: \u201cFamilies are still really struggling to meet basic needs \u2013 and I can\u2019t imagine current events are going to make it any easier.<\/p>\n \u201cBeds, a fundamental right for every child, have become almost like a luxury item.\u201d<\/p>\n Welford said problems included children sleeping on pallets on the floor, older children in toddler-sized beds, and beds becoming mouldy in houses with no floor coverings.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are children who aren\u2019t dry at night sharing beds with children who are, and families don\u2019t have the money to put the water on to wash clothes before they go to school.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are issues with temporary accommodation, issues with overcrowding \u2013 and life having become so expensive that working families are simply trying to feed children and struggling to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n Leon Evans, head of Year 7 at Canons High School in Edgware, north London, is among teachers seeing the impact of cost of living and housing pressures, which have lingered since the Covid pandemic.<\/p>\n He said: \u201cOn a yearly basis we have families who get kicked out of their homes and then councils have to relocate them far away from school. And often these kids will then have to share a room, won\u2019t have a bed to themselves and get up very early, because they\u2019ve had to move 30 miles outside London, but still value education and come to the same school. And so we have students that come to school tired.<\/p>\n \u201cSleep allows students to learn. Not having a bed, not having a secure place to sleep impacts that. Across five years, that problem is going to be multiplied \u2013 and so the equity that education provides, the opportunities that students would have, can be lost or degraded.\u201d<\/p>\n Evans has started a charity, Mr Motivator\u2019s Bed Bank<\/a>, to address bed poverty and launched a petition to call on the government to formally recognise<\/a> the issue.<\/p>\n Meanwhile Barnardo\u2019s has been working with beds and bedding brand Simba to distribute bed bundles \u2013 including mattresses, duvets and pillows \u2013 to children and families in need.<\/p>\n The Department for Work and Pensions said the removal of the two-child limit for universal credit claimants, which restricted support for third and subsequent children, would put 450,000 children \u201con a pathway out of poverty\u201d and was \u201cthe single most cost-effective measure\u201d to drive down poverty rates. The removal of the limit passed into law this month<\/a> and will take effect from 6 April.<\/p>\n The government is also expanding free school meals to every family on universal credit from the start of the 2026 school year, is promising that 500,000 more children will benefit from free breakfast clubs from September, and has said 1,000 Best Start family hubs<\/a> will be created across every local authority in England by 2028, offering free classes, events and activities and advice on finance and housing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mr Motivator is lobbying the government to tackle the number of children in the UK who have no…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":492211,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-492210","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-kingdom","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-greatbritain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=492210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492210\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/492211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=492210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=492210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=492210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}