'I've given up eating hot meals to pay for equipment to keep my son alive'
Samantha Tolmie has stopped eating hot meals to afford the equipment necessary for her son Lewis's care. Many parents in the UK are facing similar struggles due to rising energy costs and insufficient support. Charities report a significant increase in families skipping meals to manage their expenses while caring for disabled children.
- ▪Samantha Tolmie's energy bills have increased from around £100 to at least £400 a month due to the equipment needed for her son.
- ▪Disability charity Scope estimates that disabled households need an extra £1,095 each month on average to cover costs.
- ▪Over half of parents and carers reported skipping meals to afford household bills, according to a survey by Family Fund.
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| Original publisher | BBC News — Business |
| Canonical URL | https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0j2ep13le2o?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=rss |
| Publication time | Wed, 27 May 2026 04:50:24 GMT |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-27T04:52:56.781Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-27T04:52:56.781Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
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| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
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| Cluster | gg3uKyfR9-uo |
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| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
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| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
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Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
'I've given up eating hot meals to pay for equipment to keep my son alive'Just nowShareSaveAdd as preferred on GoogleKit TaylorYorkshireKit Taylor/BBCSamantha Tolmie provides 24-hour care for her son LewisSamantha Tolmie has given up eating hot meals in order to pay for the vital equipment keeping her son alive - and she is not alone. Across the UK parents are cutting corners wherever possible to make sure they can afford to look after their children."I forget that it's not normal for someone not to cook food or to sit without the lights on because it saves energy," Samantha says.Her son Lewis, now 22, is dependent on a ventilator, as well as humidifiers, suction machines and oxygen concentrators, to keep him alive, after falling seriously ill as a toddler.In order to keep all those…
Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at BBC News — Business.
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