Kim and Harley and the kids

Episode of Series “Family foibles”.
Part of the “Family foibles” series of documentaries about five Australian families. Kim and Harley are an impoverished couple living in a Ministry of Housing estate in outer Melbourne with their four little girls, including their 4-year old twins and 12-year old Gabby, the eldest, Kim’s child from an earlier marriage. By pawning their possessions, selling scrap metal and accepting food donations from charity organisations, they barely manage to make ends meet. Their circumstances are made more difficult by the fact that Kim suffers from hepatitis C and high levels of stress. While the family demonstrates great resourcefulness, humour and patience to survive below the poverty line, their hardships cause tensions to erupt regularly into aggressive shouting matches which occasionally become physically violent. A confronting portrait of a family with no support which confounds all simplistic explanations of poverty. A study guide is available from http://www.roninfilms.com.au/related/2365104851-0.pdf