Birmingham's child poverty emergency - how you can help

Almost half of our city’s children are growing up in real, sustained, poverty - make sure your voice is heard

BirminghamLive has launched a campaign demanding changes to help more than 100,000 children living in povery in our city. In a wide-ranging report, we have spelled out how children are facing horrific housing conditions, health expectations and life choices by virtue of being born here.

And the situation is getting worse. Almost half of our city’s children are growing up in real, sustained, poverty. In the city’s most deprived neighbourhoods, three in every four youngsters are affected.

Today, we are calling for eight changes to be brought in to start to turn the tide. They are:

1. End the two-child benefit cap
2. Provide free school meals to every child in poverty
3. Create a city “aid bank” for baby and child essentials
4. Protect children’s and youth services
5. Create permanent, multi year Household Support Fund and give more Discretionary housing grants
6. Set up child health and wellbeing hubs in our most deprived neighbourhoods
7. Appoint a Birmingham child poverty tsar
8. Provide free public travel for young people

You can read more about why we are calling for these changes here.

Birmingham: A Child Poverty Emergency

Child poverty is soaring in Birmingham and without urgent change, will only get worse. Having worked with charities and community groups, BirminghamLive is campaigning for the following changes to start to turn the tide:

1. End the two-child benefit cap
2. Provide free school meals to every child in poverty
3. Create a city “aid bank” for baby and child essentials
4. Protect children’s and youth services
5. Create permanent, multi year Household Support Fund and give more Discretionary Housing grants
6. Set up child health and wellbeing hubs in our most deprived neighbourhoods
7. Appoint a Birmingham child poverty tsar
8. Provide free public travel for young people

You can see why in more detail here.

Read our full report Birmingham: A Child Poverty Emergency here.

What you can do to help.

What can you do about it?

Want to take action? - Contact your MP!

Well, in short, make some noise. We think this is the biggest scandal in the city, and we think there aren't too many bigger scandals anywhere, so join us in making a noise.

And it is easy all you need to do is visit this letter generator. It will create you a letter to send to your local MP - all you need to do is bump in your postcode to get going - then send it off and call for change.