Joe Harker
A Christmas advert released by the charity Shelter has hammered home the heartbreaking message that thousands of children will spend the festive season without a proper place to call home.
With less than eight weeks to go before the festive season many Christmas adverts will be making their way onto our screens in the coming days.
Lots of them will be all about trying to sell you something, often featuring cosy depictions of a Christmas scene populated by celebrities.
Advert
Many will be aiming to tug at your heartstrings with an advert that makes little mention of what they're actually trying to sell you.
However, if there's one Christmas advert that sticks in your mind this year make it 'Good as Gold' from homeless charity Shelter.
The advert follows young girl Maddie, who is at the Post Office when she overhears another child who is delivering a letter to Santa being told: "Be as good as gold and you'll get just what you want."
From there Maddie goes about being as good as gold, helping people with their business, carrying her neighbour's Christmas tree, offering her seat on the bus to someone else, doing all of her homework and plenty of other acts of kindness.
Advert
Sure she's going to get just what she wants, Maddie instead wakes up on Christmas Day in the tiny one-room home she shares with her mum and little brother.
"But I was so good," Maddie says, having wished for her family to live in a proper home and not got her Christmas wish.
The heartbreaking advert then says: "No child should have to wish for a home, but over 131,000 do."
According to Shelter the number of children facing homelessness in England is the highest on record.
Advert
The charity says that thousands of children will spend their Christmas in accommodations like 'cold shipping containers, badly converted offices, cramped B&Bs (sometimes with six people to a room) or in places where the locks don't work properly'.
Shelter says that due to 'a lack of affordable homes in the UK' people are facing a 'spiralling' housing emergency, with more and more people facing living in temporary accommodation or on the streets.
The charity is appealing for donations this festive season to help them respond to families that are in danger of being made homeless, with money people send them also going towards legal advice for families in crisis.
They say that last year 'over five million people turned to Shelter for advice'.
You can learn more about their latest campaign and donate to Shelter here.