It was bound to be a sticking point. And how, last Thursday, "my kids came off the 'at risk' list".Back in Sunbury, smoking yet another cigarette as the children tucked into fried eggs and tinned potatoes, she considered the day. Outside, her neighbour had given her a look of studied disdain as she returned Maria Jones did not even notice. How social workers persuaded her to get sterilised against her wishes. How a lot of social workers were useless - "though not my new one, Shirley, who's an ordinary woman, a divorcee, with three kids" How working with ATD had given her a confidence she had never dreamt of. "At school, children polarise into groups that have and groups that don't. It becomes too embarrassing for a child to remain in a social group where he doesn't have the money to go ice-skating or to the cinema.

So he loses such friends and begins to congregate with other disadvantaged children. Then if one of them gets into crime, the others are drawn in, too. It is one of the nightmares of every low-income mother."After the session, at a reception in south London, Maria continued with her life story. "How can you teach table manners to children who live in a house so small that there is no room for a dining table?" said Moraene. "How can children learn the importance of reading when there are no books in the house and they never see their mother read?"Poverty socialises in other ways.

Low-income families, children in care, the elderly in homes are all treated by the state as if we're not quite fully human." Have you any idea, she asked, what it is like to have a social worker go through your cupboard to see what you've bought and whether it meets their standards of priorities? "Yes, you may meet their standards but people often get destroyed by the process of doing it."And the poverty of this generation hurts the next. It is about being refused a bank account, so that if you are disabled like me you still have to go and collect your benefits from the post office knowing that you are an easy target for a mugger."But it is more than economic. It is about borrowing pounds 80 from a loan shark and having to repay pounds 300. It is having to send your son to school in a yellow coat because that was all you could find that fitted him and was under pounds 5 - all you can afford when you live off pounds 73 a week.