I grew up in Chesterfield, Derbyshire and spent my teenage years in the Peak District. My grandfathers were practical people working for the water board and British Rail supporting the family whilst my grandmothers were based at home or working at the local school canteen. My own parents are products of that generations hard work, emphasis on self sufficiency and making ends meet . From childhoods in a council house and a small terrace in London mum and dad worked upwards to gain jobs in academic research and working for the local council.
I come from a state comprehensive school background. I went on to read History at Cambridge, funding that period of my life some parental help and a job working for the Royal Bank of Scotland, setting up accounts and working as a cashier. The idea was I would then train as a primary school teacher. Sadly I fell ill at university and was left with severe post viral syndrome (or M.E.) , taking time out of my degree, crawling through my final year then spending the next couple of years living on incapacity benefit. I can tell you all about the state benefits system first hand.
There was little I could do in those years of ill health other than drink cups of tea with those at a loose end like myself. As you look into the eyes of the wounded, lonely and destitute people in our society (and they are not all poor in the financial sense) you wonder what you can do to make someone smile, change their lives and save them from the injustices in this world.
As my health improved I volunteered to work in local schools near where I was living, reading with children with special needs, then working up to two days a week in a special needs school where I helped run a speech therapy project.
I got married in 2003. My husband and I wished to work abroad so saved money for the trip by living in a caravan in the Lake District. My husband worked as a graduate engineer and I found a job at his firm checking insurance claims, bridge calculations and logging ‘abnormal loads’. If you are not sure what they are you do not need to know! I also helped ran a local campsite shop.
In 2004 we travelled through the Middle East before working for an aid agency in Tajikistan (boardering Afghanistan) , one of the poorest countries in the world . I wrote a short report on the local mental hospital and helped dish out soup in a food kitchen to people who did not have enough to eat. I was standing under the gushing water of poverty with no way of turning off the taps. You may be familiar with the Chinese proverb ‘ Give a man a fish and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime’. I started thinking that only works if you have access to a fishing rod and are allowed to the river.
We returned to the UK and I trained as a primary school teacher in inner city schools primarily in Gateshead where we lived in a house off Sunderland road in the regeneration area where broken households came gift wrapped in crime, drugs, alcohol and social disturbance. It was an eventful time in our married life. The Northumbrian police proved excellent at dealing with Friday night revelry in the area, our car was redesigned on a couple of occasions and one night my husband woke up to the local burglar in his bedroom and chased him out in his underpants! I was very glad to be away that night. There are many elements of Gateshead that make it a fantastic place to live. Then there are those that I wanted to see changed. 
The children of Gateshead are fabulous. Government targets, unrealistic expectations surrounding inclusion (teaching all abilities together in the same class), ridiculous levels of pointless paperwork are not. It was a painful journey for me as I realised my longstanding ambition to be a teacher and input positively into children’s lives could be potentially drowned out by a system that as a teacher you are powerless to change and must deliver. Additionally, working with children from less than ideal backgrounds again illuminated the wider problems in our society. This was my personal tipping point to start investigating political solutions. Politics at its best can change structures and organisations so they work and it can dramatically alter the way people live.
I was offered a job on Iain Duncan Smiths ‘Social Justice Policy Group’ based in Westminster and worked in both an administrative and research capacity. The group reported to the Conservative Party in July 2007 with policy solutions to tackle relative poverty in Britain.
I am now a full time mother of a two year old boy and am awaiting the arrival of his baby sibling. I felt it was important to take time out for our children even though this is not always recognised in our frenetic world as a good choice to make. We are not financially well off because of the decision – but the Anderson family is happy. I am glad we have been able to make this choice because I recognise not everyone’s circumstances allows for this as an option.
In my spare time I like to write, hike and swim. In a bygone era I ran marathons and participated in fell runs. Now I seem to run marathons on a daily basis trying to keep up with my extremely energetic toddler!
