The Cost of Hope

Summary A conversation with a woman, recently widowed, living in a poorblack community of London, reveals the difficulty in merelysurviving that she, her family and families like her own presentlyare experiencing. Her concers are with housing, schools, healthcare for herself and her children, ageing when one lives inpoverty, and perhaps most significantly, her gradual loss ofhope that anything can be done to improve her circumstances.The study reported has been done on one single family; it isnot a composite of several families, although clearly, the lifeof this one woman is most representative of families livingwhere she lives.     

A Bedroom for Sheila Cooperton

Summary A series of interviews with a young West Indian girl livingin London reveals the profound effect of housing conditions,and the architecture of poverty generally, on the psychologicaldevelopment of the adolescent. In the reported interviews, whichhave been reconstructed, one begins to appreciate how not havingsomething as simple as one's own bedroom may influence a child'sfeelings about sexuality, sex role distinctions, family, intimacyand the emergence of her very identity. Most significantly,perhaps, is the fact that the child herself (her name has beenchanged) recognizes the relationship between environmental deprivationand the substance of conscious and unconscious materials.