From Hidden Need to Shared Life
In this article, Jo Stow invites schools to look beyond management and service delivery to something deeper: a relational culture where hidden needs can surface without shame. Drawing on real experiences from Common Good Schools, she explores what it really means to live the option for the poor, not just by providing support, but by creating a climate of trust where children and families feel safe to come forward. This is a gentle but powerful call to shift from projects and data to genuine noticing, relationship, and solidarity.
We often begin with data. Percentages. Indicators. Free school meal eligibility. These things matter. They give us a sense of scale and help us to name where need might be. However, they do not tell the whole story.
There is poverty in every school, regardless of the data.
Some children fall through the gaps. Some families are not visible in the way systems expect them to be. Others choose not to be visible at all. The result is that much of what matters remains just out of sight, known only in fragments, or not at all.
We are used to looking at what can be measured. But much of what matters in a school community cannot be measured so easily. It has to be noticed.
A culture where people can come forward
Recently, I was speaking with a school that has a food bank. That in itself is not unusual. In April 2024 the BBC reported: “Researchers found there are 4,000 school-based foodbanks in primary and secondary schools across England, which equates to one in every five.”
Many schools are responding in practical ways to the pressures families are facing. But what stayed with me afterwards was not the provision itself. It was the way the school spoke about it.
In this school, children and parents approach staff themselves when they need help.
There is no sense that you have to reach a particular threshold before you are allowed to ask. No formal process that sits between a person and their need. Staff spoke about being open to receiving those requests, and about the importance of how that moment is handled.
Over time, something has taken root in the culture of the school.
Parents come forward. Children speak.
Not because the need is greater there than anywhere else, but because it is possible to speak about it.
When need is recognised
At Christmas, this became visible in a different way.
Through small conversations and a growing awareness of family circumstances, staff began to realise that some children would not receive any presents.
This was not something that had been formally declared. It surfaced gradually, through the kind of knowledge that only comes from relationship.
So, the school responded.
They gathered gifts and created hampers. They arranged for them to be given out through a raffle, so that no child would be singled out. Most of the families never knew that the school had seen their situation.
But one pupil realised.
He came to speak to a member of staff and said, through tears, that this was the first Christmas he had ever received presents.
There is something very simple here, and also something very profound.
The need had not been announced. It had been recognised.
What the option for the poor asks of us
This is where the question of the Catholic Social Teaching principle, the “option for the poor”, begins to shift.
It is easy to think of it in terms of provision. What do we offer? What do we put in place? What additional support can we provide? But the question is not only whether support exists. It is whether people feel able to come forward at all.
That depends on culture.
It depends on whether people feel known and seen. It depends on the level of trust, whether what is hidden can surface without fear of shame.
Acts 2:44-45 describes the early Church as a community where people shared what they had and gave to anyone who was in need. Poverty had not disappeared, but it could not remain hidden, because people were close enough to respond together.
Holding the tension
Of course, there are tensions in all of this.
Providing practical support matters. It makes a real difference to children struggling to concentrate in the classroom. But it also raises deeper questions about what sits behind that need, about what a school can and cannot address.
Providing practical support matters. It makes a real difference in the moment. But it also raises deeper questions about what sits behind that need, and about what a school can and cannot address.
Those questions are important. They deserve time and attention.
But they are not separate from what is happening day to day.
The way we see need shapes how we respond to it.
If we see through the lens of service provision, we will focus on meeting immediate need. If we begin to ask why that need exists, we start to notice patterns that point beyond the individual to something shared.
So the question is not whether we respond or whether we ask why.
It is whether we are able to hold both together.
Because noticing what is already present among us is often what makes the deeper questions visible in the first place.
Learning to notice
In Common Good Schools, we are learning that this kind of seeing is not straightforward. Schools are often shaped by a service model. Provide. Deliver. Raise awareness. Fundraise. These are familiar patterns, but they can also create distance.
Relational work asks something different.
It asks us to slow down, to pay attention, to take seriously the small fragments of knowledge that emerge through everyday interactions. The bits and pieces that, over time, reveal something deeper about a child or a family. Because you cannot know what is going on unless you are in a trusting relationship.
Getting uncomfortable
We ask our partner schools to build relationships in their neighbourhoods.
This means looking beyond the school gates. Paying attention to the people, groups, and organisations that make up the local community, and finding ways to connect. As these relationships grow, schools often begin to see their own community differently, including the experiences of families whose struggles may not yet be fully known.
From here, connections can deepen. Schools begin to find others locally who share the same concern, and working together can make a real difference.
But there is a risk.
If our response remains only at the level of provision, we can unintentionally reinforce distance. Support may be offered, but a sense of separation remains.
Common good thinking invites us to go further. Not instead of responding, but alongside it.
It asks us to question why things are the way they are, and to recognise when patterns of injustice are shaping the lives of the families we know.
In our KS3 and KS4 programme, young people encounter stories like Maria’s, which open up these questions. Through her experience, they begin to see how insecure work, low wages, and limited opportunity shape people’s lives in ways that are often hidden.
The responses are often striking. In some schools, these realities are already familiar. In others, they come as a shock. Young people begin to recognise that this is not simply about individual circumstances. It points to something deeper. And often, they want to act.
It is at this point that the instinct is to do something immediate. To provide, to campaign, to respond quickly. But other possibilities begin to emerge when relationships are already in place.
Trusted relationships offer space for more creative responses. Schools connected with local businesses, churches, and community groups can facilitate conversations that include the very families most affected.
New ideas can take shape. Not only meeting need, but opening up pathways towards greater stability, dignity, and participation.
Solidarity
This is where the question deepens. Genuine relationships can shine a light on why the need exists at all. They can reveal the consequences of insecure work and a low wage economy, and begin to draw people into a shared life where these realities are no longer hidden.
In Common Good Schools, we are beginning to see how this awareness can grow. Maria’s story of insecure work and low wages was tackled head on by a church creating a social enterprise that paid the London Living wage and improved both working conditions and job security.
Encountering these realities in a relational context can shift how poverty is perceived. It moves from something hidden to something shared.
A community shaped by the common good is not only attentive to need. It is also marked by solidarity.
Jo Stow is Project Leader, Common Good Schools
T4CG’s Common Good Schools programme equips schools to enable children and young people develop skills around building relationships and taking responsibility. Schools acting as good neighbours in their communities not only strengthen their own students but make a tangible contribution to the shared life of their neighbourhood. Find out more and arrange a conversation with Jo here