Birmingham's children are being let down - our priorities are all wrong

More than 100,000 children live in poverty in Birmingham - it is shameful

What we are seeing in Birmingham is shameful - the children we are here to protect are being let down on a mass scale. And don't for a second think it can't change.

No fewer than 46 per cent of children in our city live in poverty. My journalists go out to schools, foodbanks and community hubs and come back in tears.

And this is a political choice. I get the UK economy has been ravaged but the reason so many children are impoverished is not because we can't afford to give them a better chance at life. It is because our society doesn't care quite enough.

In Scandinavia, fewer than five per cent of children live in poverty. Am I really expected to believe they're that much more financially powerful? No, it is just a higher priority for them.

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.

More than 100,000 children live in poverty in Birmingham. If you walk past a class of schoolchildren, the odds are half of them are impoverished. If it's in the inner-city, it'd be more like three-quarters. In 2024.

Increasingly, Birmingham is the Child Poverty City. We are talked about as ‘the youngest in Europe’, with hundreds of thousands of people under 25. In practice, it is a large group we are failing.

It's taken two months to compile our report on Birmingham child poverty and it's a multi-faceted issue. Housing is a massive part of it, but the impact is wide-ranging. Kids in Birmingham die young more than elsewhere in the UK. A lot more. Children in deprivation start life far, far, less likely to succeed in life and much, much, more likely to end up incarcerated.

And presently children can consider themselves unfortunate to have been born in large swathes of Birmingham. Well, we have had enough.

People can argue why - the Labour council, Conservative austerity, welfare cuts, rising costs, low pay - they're probably all right. I don't care really - I care about what is done about it. You'll have heard about taskforces and plans and projects before to address this problem. We need them to start working - but it's too late for even that. In Birmingham, we need action now.

We have been working for months on a report - Birmingham - A Child Poverty Emergency - to outline the scale of the issue. Have a read - you'll see these problems are deep, heart-breaking and getting worse.

Today, we are demanding eight changes 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.

Again, this is a choice. If Birmingham, or the West Midlands, or the UK, made child poverty its priority, we wouldn't be where we are now. As it happens, Labour is in power in all three of those areas. We think this should be priority number one for Sir Keir Starmer, as he goes into his first Labour Party Conference as Prime Minister.

Want to take action? - Contact your MP!

It's an emergency - so let's do something about it. You can start by contacting your MP - and we have made it really easy.

Inequality, child poverty has gripped Birmingham. Children are dying, or condemned to a shorter life than they ought, because of poverty.

This critical situation will lead to more children suffering, and will mean the wait for help is longer. That’s shameful.