Dean used to work at the steelworks in Scunthorpe, but now he, his wife and their seven children and stepchildren get by on benefits. Dean is a guide to his world, where being out of work is nothing out of the ordinary, where people do what they can to survive and where keeping your kids on the straight and narrow is a challenge. On Dean's estate, the film follows the shoplifter who sells stolen deodorant on the cheap and a 15-year-old boy who has been excluded from seven different schools. For them and many others across the country, this is what it means to be skint.