Hands Around Liverpool

According to Child Action Against Poverty, 3.5 million children are currently living in severe poverty in the UK, which is more than 25% of the nation’s children. For BME communities, the poverty imbalance is widened. Around 40% of people from ethnic minorities live in low-income households, double the rate for white communities, and within ethnic groups there are significant variations with 70% of Bangladeshis living in low-income households.

Evidence has shown that being born into poverty and the earliest experiences in a baby’s life have an enormous influence on a child’s future life chances and outcomes. A positive start is connected with a variety of social outcomes such as; better emotional and social development, better performance at school, improved work outcomes and improved health.

Therefore services which help to combat and alleviate the number of children trapped in poverty, must surely be valued? Services such as Sure Start Children’s Centres play a crucial role in fighting child poverty and supporting children and families from poorer backgrounds. They provide services to any family with a child from birth to age 5 and are open to all parents and carers and give advice and support on child and family health, parenting, training and employment.

In May 2010, David Cameron in his capacity as the Leader of the Conservative Party, declared:

We back Sure Start. It’s a disgrace that Gordon Brown has been trying to frighten people about this. He’s the Prime Minister of this country, but he’s been scaring people about something that really matters. We are strongly committed to Sure Start Children’s Centres”

Indeed, at Prime Minister's Questions a year later, Cameron told the House of Commons that Sure Start funding was protected and that "centres do not need to close".

However, despite these claims and the important role in fighting child poverty which Sure Start Centres play, hundreds of centres face closure and thousands of others are reducing services and have warned of job losses.

In Liverpool, 23 out of 26 Sure Start Centres are marked for closure. Liz Parsons, organiser of the Hands around Liverpool Campaign which is campaigning against the closing down of Sure Start Centres in Liverpool, said:

In Liverpool, there are 26 centres that are being affected, the plan is at the moment that 3 will remain and 23 will close on 1 January 2016. On average each centre deals with between 1000 and 1200 families, so if they close 23 of those centres that is an awful lot of families that are going to find it really difficult to access services."

She added,

However, in areas of great deprivation, parents don’t have the ability to travel, so they are expecting parents to pay for 2 bus journeys to get to the centre to access services. Also course with the vast increase of members of families allocated to one centre, the service they will get will be incredibly diluted because the staff team will not increase greatly. For example, in our centres we currently deal with 965 families, however in 18 months time that could be approximately 7000 families allocated to us”.

Parsons, along with hundreds of campaigners, will form a human chain this Friday around the 23 centres which potentially face closure, to demonstrate their message.

One of the supporters of the ‘Hands Around Liverpool’ Campaign is OBV Graduate and Liverpool Councillor Nathalie Nicholas who said:

We are sending a message to the Government to say - look what you caused, people are willing to form a human shield around sure start centres to say stop, think, listen, this is the impact you are going have on human communities!”

Talking about the campaign, Liz Parsons said:

On Friday 27th June, we are asking families and professionals to come out for a human chain around each of the centres in the city at the same time. The reason we have picked up that date is because it falls within Child’s Safety Week, so we are looking to highlight the impact for families if the services withdraw and raise awareness amongst families that they need to stand up and say something. “

As child poverty figures look to soar to 5 million by 2020, according to Save the Children, it is incumbent for politicians from all the political parties to take their promises to eradicate child poverty seriously. One would think that reducing women and children in poverty would be one of the primary targets for any politician, official figures reveal that there is a proposed cut of 72% to Children’s Centres in Liverpool.

In an outspoken attack on the political establishment the charity accuses all the main parties of lacking the credibility and willpower to deliver It says 5 million children – up from 3.5 million currently – will be living in poverty by 2020 if planned welfare spending cuts go ahead and no action is taken to alleviate the growing cost of living pressures on Britain's poorest families.

Save the Children Chief Executive Justin Forsyth said that all the mainstream political parties treat the Child Poverty Act, their shared legal requirement to radically cut child poverty levels, as "window dressing", and none have a viable strategy to achieve it. He said,

Our political class is sleepwalking towards the highest levels of child poverty since records began while promising to eradicate it completely."

To get involved in the Human Chain on Friday 27th June or to sign the petition, click here: You can also help by signing the petition and liking the Facebook page

By Viktor Dúbrava