The Startling Truth

More children are in poverty in Birmingham now than at any time since records began. No fewer than 46% of the city’s children are impoverished - up from 27% in 2015. It’s more than twice the national average, and getting worse. Ten years ago, Birmingham had the eighth-highest child poverty rate in the UK - now it’s third.

While other places seem to be protecting their children from the worst impacts, here in Birmingham the data shows we are not.

The gap between the wealthy and the poorest is growing, and kids are bearing the brunt.

Our investigation doesn’t merely rely on data. We have read around the subject and there is a lot to go at. Multiple child poverty strategies have been written; some recommendations enacted, but many largely left gathering dust. The 2016 Birmingham Child Poverty Commission is one of many examples.

We found that every part of the city is affected, as our breakdown of child poverty rates by constituency between 2014 and 2023 reveals.

Today's Child Poverty Rate and Child Poverty Rate 2014

Area	Current Poverty Rate	Previous Poverty Rate
Ladywood	57.0%	39.2%
Hodge Hill and Solihull North	49.0%	30.4%
Perry Barr	48.9%	35.3%
Hall Green and Moseley	47.1%	35.1%
Yardley	45.8%	31.1%
Erdington	35.4%	20.8%
Northfield	30.3%	17.0%
Edgbaston	30.1%	18.2%
Selly Oak	27.6%	17.6%
Sutton Coldfield	10.2%	7.1%

The Heartlands ward, in the Hodge Hill constituency, has the highest rate of child poverty in Birmingham, at 71%. That means you walk into a classroom with 30 kids in it, and 21 of them are living below the breadline. But as you can see it is far from an outlier. Ten of the city’s wards have child poverty rates higher than 60%.

Liam Byrne is MP for Hodge Hill and Solihull North, and represents some of the worst affected areas in our city. In his book The Inequality of Wealth, he exposed how the burgeoning gap between the richest and poorest has been allowed to grow, by political choice, with its impacts felt by the kids in his constituency. “Our country is in the midst of a moral emergency in which the top 1% have multiplied their wealth since 2010 by 31 times the wealth of everyone else. So sales of super yachts, luxury cars and private jets are at an all time high, at the same time as poverty is deepening. That cannot be right. We need a radical reset.”

We need to talk about race

Birmingham is the only core city in England and Wales to have more than half of the population (51.4% in 2021) from an ethnic minority background. This superdiversity is higher in younger people, with 67% of those aged 0-15 being identified as from ethnic minority backgrounds. (Public Health Report, Birmingham City Council, 2024)

A look at two characteristics of the wards which have the highest levels of child poverty confirms that there is a race and faith dimension at play. (Ward Profiles, Birmingham City Observatory, 2021)

• Heartlands is 77% Muslim, with 65.1% of its population identifying as Asian or Asian-British
• Alum Rock is 83.7% Muslim, with 75% Asian or Asian-British
• Bordesley Green is 80.2% Muslim, with 61.2% Asian or Asian-British
• Ward End is 74.6% Muslim, with 67.8% Asian or Asian-British
• Small Heath is 85.9% Muslim, with 74.3% Asian or Asian-British
• Aston is 77% Muslim, with 73.7% Asian or Asian-British
• Sparkbrook & Balsall Heath East is 77.4% Muslim, with 66% Asian or Asian-British
• Sparkhill is 79.3% Muslim, with 78.3% Asian or Asian-British
• Newtown is 43% Muslim, with 45.9% Black, African, Caribbean, or Black British, 25.9% Asian/British Asian
• Tyseley and Hay Mills is 49.7% Muslim, with 45.1% Asian or Asian-British

Jagwant Johal, of Birmingham Race Impact Group, says the data is no surprise to anyone long involved in the city’s child poverty agenda. “The role centrally played by structural and institutional racism has been known about through research and the real-life impact on local families for decades. Yet policy makers and politicians continue to take a sticking plaster approach. They don't commit to long term programmes to create sustainable change in our neighbourhoods… until they do, our Asian and Black communities will continue to die 10 years sooner than white communities. For us it is really a cradle to grave issue - that poor start impacts opportunities throughout life.”

Ranjit Sondhi, the organisation’s founder and chair, is also a director for local NHS trusts and said: “In the 1960s and 70s we set up neighbourhood projects after an analysis of gross and intolerable poverty in the heart of our inner city. The situation has got depressingly worse. We are confining whole sections of our young people to an impoverished existence. The fatal coincidence of race and poverty, while not entirely unexpected, is just as shocking.”

Two in three children living in poverty in Birmingham come from a working family (66%).

Of those who don’t work, many are struggling with disabilities, mental ill health and additional needs; or are caring for a child with additional needs. We are a city that’s seen a bigger recent net rise in its population (up 71,000 between 2011 and 2021) than any other local authority; and one where a higher proportion of households have dependent children than anywhere else, which adds to pressure on services.

The unemployment claimant rate in Birmingham is the second worst in the country, at 7.2% (2023) while the proportion of people who are economically inactive is high at 28.3%. We also have a significant proportion of workers on temporary and zero hours contracts - 8% in 2022.

We met Anton Pinder (not his real name). A few years ago, he had a successful job working on HS2 and lived with his wife and three children. Today, he tries to sleep on a sofa in cramped, temporary accommodation, just so his daughter can sleep.

He explained: "We were in temporary accommodation on the Hagley Road before but that one had bed bugs and cockroaches. You could literally see them running up the walls. So we were moved into this new place in January.

"It's having a big impact on my daughter. She's getting bullied because of where she lives. She wants to have her friends round but she can't because we're not allowed to have any visitors. It feels like a prison.”

Certain ethnicities are more likely to be affected by the benefit cap. Children in families where the head of household is white are the least likely to be living in poverty, at 18%, UK-wide figures show. The figure rises to 25% for mixed or multiple ethnic groups, 32% for Black families and 36% for Asian families. Within that group, 53% of Bangladeshi and 45% of Pakistani children are living in poverty.

Evidence that lifting the two-child cap would make an instant impact is mounting, locally and nationally. Joanna Rea, director of advocacy for the UK Committee for UNICEF said she hoped the new Labour government would ‘start making the UK one of the best places to raise a child and reverse years of underinvestment and austerity, which have contributed to the UK having the highest increase in child poverty of any rich country.” She added: “The first step to lifting babies and young children out of poverty is to immediately abolish the two-child limit on Universal Credit and end the benefit cap.”

We know this solution comes with a significant cost. The Resolution Foundation says it will cost an estimated £2.5bn-£3.6bn this year. Ending the cap will involve a political choice.

No crib for a bed, and all the other essentials families lack

Nine-year-old Rosie (not her real name) is one of thousands of children across the city who don’t have their own bed to sleep in. She was struggling to concentrate and appeared aloof in lessons - only for teachers to learn she did not have a bed at home. While her parents slept on the sofa, Rosie and her brothers and sisters had to 'take it in turns' to use the bed at night.

Staff at the Summit Learning Trust primary school in Birmingham sprang into action; the family became one of ten they have supported in the last year to get every child a bed of their own. They went on to set up Summit Base Camp, its own project to ensure every child had a positive 'base level' on which to start learning. Over the past academic year, the scheme has provided 18,000 free breakfasts to learners, delivered more than 5,000 food parcels to families, given out 3,500 health and hygiene packs and issued more than 2,300 school uniform items to pupils.

Citywide, the Safe Sleep Scheme is run by Thrive Together Birmingham, Birmingham PlayCare Network, Spurgeons and Barnardos Childrens Centres for the early years 0-5 years age group. Multiple schools and multi-academy trusts run their own operations. Several baby banks also operate across the city, many run by volunteers and reliant on donations. All of these brilliant schemes are trying to ensure children do not suffer from lack of basic essentials.

We have been left in no doubt that people in positions of influence and power want to end child poverty. Nobody wants children to suffer. But in times of crisis, staying focused on one problem among multiple is hard.

No place to call home

It doesn’t take long for 11 year old Aya to show us around the place that is home. A 33-second video captures the entire area she shares with two siblings and her mum in a Hagley Road B&B.

Three single mattresses butted up together make their communal bed. It’s also where Aya and her younger brothers do homework and eat on their laps. Their entire belongings are in bags and neat piles on the floor.

There’s no wardrobe, no kitchen, the en-suite bathroom doubles up as a changing room, shared loo and dishwashing zone.

Aya later became a young ambassador for Birmingham Citizens, an alliance of faith, education, trade union and community organisations that seeks to overcome injustice and win change.

Her family is one of hundreds every year trapped in a B&B merry-go-round in the city.

Originally intended as an emergency bolthole for a few days, many are having to live in these rooms for months, even years. As at July 2024, more than 500 families with dependent children were stuck in B&Bs for more than six weeks, the lawful limit.

A city council pledge to bring the number down to zero has faded into memory, as the families in need just keep coming, with no homes to send them to. As a result the council is now spending £2.2m EVERY MONTH to fund B&B accommodation.

B&B usage is only part of the story. At the end of March 2024, the most recent reliable figures, there were 4,824 homeless households living in temporary accommodation in Birmingham - 4,532 of them with children. That compares with just 484 families in March 2010. The majority are single parent families.

A staggering 10,176 children live in temporary accommodation in our city at the last count - a record number. In 2010, that number was 1,218. Inevitably, that comes at a financial cost too. In 2021-22 the city council spent £42m on temporary accommodation. In 2023-24, that jumped to £59m.

Birmingham now has the biggest chunk of its overall population categorised as homeless of any city in the country - 8.1%, or around 91,000 people.

Far too many of them are children.

The council says it is trying its best to keep more families off the homeless roster in the first place, with one of the best ‘prevention’ rates in the country.

But its financial crisis means it has had to shelve the schemes it was most enthusiastic about. A £400m, five-year plan to buy up 300 private properties a year to accommodate families stuck in B&Bs fell apart, replaced by a much smaller scheme. Further exacerbating the situation is that a mere 75 affordable social homes were built last year across the whole city.

And still the families keep coming.

More than 24,500 households are currently on the Birmingham council housing waiting list. Many of them are on the list because they live in overcrowded homes; while the key causes of homelessness are domestic violence and eviction. With so few houses available, however, the wait can be years. The council encourages families to seek out private options.

But our analysis of house prices, rents and the costs of food, versus wages, shows it is not that easy. Wages are just not keeping pace. Average house prices in Birmingham have gone up 67% in a decade and city rents have increased by 46%. A housing shortage is contributing. The cost of food has gone up a lot too, by 35% in a decade. But wages have only gone up 27%, and that statistic could be worse if Birmingham had not committed to being a Living Wage City.

One way the city council has tried to plug the gap between income and housing costs is through a discretionary housing fund, which can be shared with households to cover rent shortfalls, deposits and guarantees and keep them out of the homeless system.

But the amount given by central government has been drastically cut back and that reduces the ability to help families.

When home is a hellhole

For those families lucky enough to have access to a home via the council, a housing association or private landlord, the problems are not necessarily over. Far too many of the homes families are living in are squalid and damp. Overcrowding is a major issue, with 9.4%, or 39,804, of the 423,456 households in Birmingham deemed too full, according to the 2024 Birmingham public health report.

During our investigation, we saw the appalling conditions inside some homes that exploitative landlords are happy for children to live in that are, frankly, not fit for animals.

Worryingly, much of it is state sanctioned, funded by housing benefits paid by the Department of Work and Pensions or other arm of government, seemingly with few questions asked. That’s because housing benefit payments are made based on the individual’s income circumstances and the rental value of the property, not its condition.

In a single month (May 2024), more than £11m was paid out in housing benefits for households in Birmingham, some of it direct, some via universal credit. We know much of it is going to landlords who are abjectly failing their tenants by putting them up in substandard accommodation.

We can safely say this because one of the city’s biggest culprits is the council itself. Out of the 61,000 properties it rents out, more than HALF fail to meet Decent Homes Standards - a minimum safety and habitation criteria set by the government.

Things are so bad that the Housing Ombudsman ruled last year that thousands of council tenants and families were living in homes that are potentially putting them at serious risk of harm, on a huge scale.

New surveys of properties have since revealed that if anything the problem was understated, with major issues found in more than 30,000 council properties. The council has since embarked on a housing improvement and maintenance programme, with plans to spend £1.5 billion over the next eight years to ensure all its homes meet Decent Homes Standards.

As well as trying to put its own house in order, the council is also responsible for trying to ensure private landlords don’t exploit residents or put them up in shoddy homes. Its new Selective Licensing Scheme enforces strict regulations on landlords to create a safer, healthier and more secure rental market. Landlords who don’t licence their properties as required face fines of up to £30,000.

The council says of the current situation: “The national council housing system is broken and its future is in danger. Councils across the country are under intense pressure to balance financial pressures in their Housing Revenue Account business plans to improve its stock and meet the increasing demand for affordable housing. Urgent action is needed and we, alongside other councils, are lobbying the new government to bring in changes that will deliver more and better council homes that our city badly needs.”

There are few quick fixes to this situation. Building more homes, and particularly more social and affordable homes, are key.

But in the meantime families and campaigners feel the council and government could be doing more. Far too many of Birmingham’s family houses have been allowed to be changed into HMOs or ‘exempt’ supported accommodation. Communities say concentrations of these properties is changing the face of their communities forever and needs to be halted. We have spotlighted these efforts in a long-running BirminghamLive campaign that you can get a taste of here.

We also saw lots of evidence that the city is failing to hold developers and investors to account over social and affordable housing provision. City planning guidance says every major housing scheme of ten units or more should either includes a high (35%) percentage of affordable and social homes, or contribute a financial equivalent. This is just not happening in significant numbers.

Both of these issues need further exploration and action. But our data dive shows there is one thing the Government could usefully do now to keep more Birmingham children out of homelessness.

The impact of poverty on children’s health is undeniable. Birmingham’s children generally fare poorly compared to their peers across the country.

When we drill down into the health outcomes in poorer parts of the city compared to better off areas, stark differences emerge. Data going back decades shows children born in the most deprived postcodes, and into poorer families in our city, will live fewer years in good health, and fewer years overall, than those born in affluent neighbourhoods.

A baby born in the heart of Druids Heath - an area that is the most deprived small neighbourhood in the city - will be at far greater risk of a multitude of adverse health outcomes than a baby born in Sutton Coldfield Four Oaks, which is the least deprived.

In 2010, Birmingham’s Human City Institute reported the gap in life expectancy between the inner cities and outer Birmingham was a decade. Change since has been frustratingly slow. This year’s 2023/24 annual public health report by Dr Justin Varney, public health director for the city, used a train track map to show the difference in life expectancy for men and women depending on which ‘station’ they live near.

Dr Chris Bird is an emergency medicine consultant at Birmingham Children’s Hospital, and he sees increasing numbers of children falling ill and attending emergency care directly because of poverty. “Pretty much any aspect of child health you care to think of will have a poverty dimension…from respiratory conditions, the state of a child’s teeth, skin and weight, their mental wellbeing, their life expectancy, their exposure to pollution and smoking, their diet.

“We see it through the front door of our hospital, in the GP surgeries and early help projects every single day. We are in a poverty pandemic and, yes, children are becoming seriously ill or dying because of poverty.”

“The consequences are seen not just in the obvious conditions we treat that are directly linked to food poverty, for example, but the indirect effects. We see, for example, a child with a burn from a hot drink, and then find the family are in a single B&B room, with no surfaces to put things down, and four kids in this cramped space, and it’s easy to understand how that could happen.

“We see children admitted to intensive care with asthma that has been exacerbated by the damp and mouldy conditions they live in. Eczema is another issue that can be hugely affected by living conditions.

“It is not controversial to say that child poverty has gone up because of austerity, it is a fact,” he said.

“Respiratory illnesses are especially prevalent in areas of poverty. Overcrowded living conditions and damp homes trigger asthma and chest infections. Some of our deprived communities are also the most congested with traffic, so there are air pollution issues. Smoking is also heavily correlated with poverty still, and it’s hard for some to give up when they are in the middle of a crisis.

“The impact of poverty on mental health is real and profound, and was made worse by the pandemic. We see that stress and anxiety levels are increased; it’s understandable, if they are in households where parents are fretting about being able to feed them, clothe them, where things are chaotic.”

We looked at the data in four areas of child health.

ASTHMA

One issue recurs repeatedly in impoverished households in the city - the scourge and impact of damp and mould. This is not just a housing crisis - it’s a health emergency too.

Emergency hospital admissions for asthma are more than twice as high among children in the most deprived areas. Birmingham has the 10th highest rate of hospital admissions for asthma in the country, at 214.6 per 100,000 in 2022/23, compared to 122.2 per 100,000 across the UK.

Take a look around this council property in Northfield.

It is home to a desperately ill dad, his wife and four teenagers. Their world came crashing down when the dad, a security guard, became ill with a life threatening rare blood disorder. While he was in hospital their private landlord threw them out, using 'no fault' Section 21 eviction rules, and they turned to the city council.

And after a two-month hostel stay, it was this semi-detached house, with its damp, leaking roof and unsafe electrics, that the family were sent to.

When we visited, there was mould visible in every room, with toxic spores visibly growing in the roof of a downstairs bathroom. A ceiling had collapsed and, though patched up numerous times, it kept leaking.

The council charged £900 a month to live here. The family, who’d fallen on hard times through no fault of their own, had no choice but to take it, told there was nothing else.

This home is far from a rarity - and it’s taking its toll on young lungs.

In Small Heath, we came across Meena. This is how the five-year-old was left, breathing through an oxygen mask in her hospital bed.

Her desperate mother, Sur, pleaded with the city council to move her family out of their damp and mouldy flat before it was "too late". Sur, a domestic violence survivor who fled Iraq, told us: "I am very frightened, I do not want a lot, I do not expect a lot, just somewhere that is safe for my children where they can breathe and get well.

"I am nervous and depressed, I sometimes think about doing the worst because it is such a struggle."

The tragic death of Awaab Ishak in Rochdale, living in a mouldy home at the time when he died aged two, was a wake up call that has resulted in damp being treated as a critical issue here and across the country, with a new law named after the little lad.

We asked the city council what it was doing to address the issue, particularly given it is the biggest landlord in Birmingham. It said it was working closely with the NHS to collect more data via hospital admissions and asthma clinics to look at the housing conditions of children being treated for asthma to get a full picture, and to support families whose first language is not English to navigate health services around asthma. It was also updating its Brum Breathes clean air strategy and extending its retrofitting programme to focus on indoor air quality.

A ‘Green Doctor’ scheme introduced to identify and eradicate mould and damp in disadvantaged households through education, practical help, the use of dehumidifiers and other steps has been reporting brilliant results. It’s a joint project created and led by Groundworks and Thrive Together Birmingham, funded by a Household Support Fund grant from the council.

The city council is also working to tackle air pollution. The city centre and its immediate environs are covered by a Clean Air Zone that was controversially introduced in 2021 - it is designed to keep high-polluting vehicles out and generates funds to spend on other pollution busting initiatives. A website Brum Breathes lists all the other things being done locally to bring down pollution levels, including car free school streets. Its transport plans promoting more walking and cycling were also aimed at having a ‘ripple effect’ on air pollution, says the council.

Infant Mortality

The prospect of new life should be a cause of celebration yet tragedy sometimes follows. In Birmingham, the infant mortality rate is close to double the national average and one of the worst in the country.

Around seven in every 1,000 babies born in Birmingham between 2020 and 2022 died before their first birthday; most in their first days. The national rate was 3.9 per 1,000. The impact is felt most in Birmingham’s Pakistani population, while other Asian and Black families are also more affected.

A multi-agency ‘Reducing Infant Mortality in Birmingham’ task force was established in 2021 to investigate the issue with a target of halving the rate by 2025. It has worked with clinicians, academics, co parents and maternity providers to bring changes, including a review of genetic screening to help identify potential issues ahead of pregnancy. Healthy faith toolkits have also been created.

Ahliya and Sheik, from Sparkbrook, are among the couples who have experienced the desperate pain of loss. At 17 weeks into a longed-for pregnancy they discovered their unborn child was highly unlikely to be viable. Determined to meet their baby, Ahliya carried the little one to term and he survived for just over an hour. “We went for a scan and were told something was wrong. I opted to carry on with the pregnancy to full term, knowing our baby was not going to survive. It’s something I don’t regret. If I had aborted him all my life I would have had a regret - I was able to see him, touch him, and Islamically we got to do everything we needed to for him.” The moulds of the little boy’s feet and hands, mounted alongside those of his older sister and the couple’s new son, is a permanent reminder of their loss.

Baby Mohammed Abu Bakr Sheikh’s foot and hand moulds are preserved forever alongside those of his older sister Khadijah Sheikh and the couple’s newest addition Yunus.

The couple are among more than 100 in Birmingham annually to lose their babies shortly after birth.

Obesity and tooth decay due to poor diet and poor oral hygiene

An overreliance on cheap takeaways - deprived neighbourhoods are stuffed with them - and a lack of access to fresh ingredients and cooking facilities are drivers of obesity among poor children. Youngsters in the poorest parts of the country are more than twice as likely to be obese, and Birmingham has higher-than-average rates of child obesity. A total of 27% are obese in Year 6/aged 10, compared to 22.7% across England).

A recent photo of the teeth of a four-year-old child from Birmingham

This can present itself in multiple ways - constipation is one of the biggest reasons for children attending A&E or their GP. It can be very painful, exacerbated by lack of activity in homes where children have little room to move, or don’t have easy access to outdoor spaces.

Children in Birmingham from poor households are also more likely to suffer tooth decay than children in wealthy households. The proportion of five year olds with visually obvious tooth decay is more than three times as high in the most deprived neighbourhoods in the country than the most well off. A staggering 38.5% of children in deprivation have tooth decay. Many children don’t have a toothbrush, or have never been shown how to clean their teeth.

Mental health

Rising rates of mental ill health among children, exacerbated during the Covid pandemic, are often linked to the stress of poverty, and services are currently overwhelmed. Latest data from CAMHS, the mental health service for children and adolescents in Birmingham, reveals only 1% of referrals are being seen within six months.

Health and social care workers across the city know these four problems and others like them won’t be resolved through reactive, crisis interventions, but in tackling and preventing the problems in the first place. Dr Bird is evangelical about a project he is part of in Sparkbrook that supports some of the families most in need and helps break the poverty/poor health link - and we say it could be a blueprint for the future.

Inside Sparkbrook Children’s Zone - a children’s health and wellbeing hub

In response to concerns about child ill health and poverty in the Hall Green area, a new project was launched two years ago. Called Sparkbrook Children’s Zone, it’s a collaborative involving the NHS, Birmingham Children’s Hospital, eight local GP practices, and a family support initiative. It is funded by Birmingham and Solihull Integrated Care System and Birmingham Children’s Trust, and its support elements are delivered by Green Square Accord, a housing provider and care organisation. Together the programme serves around 14,000 children registered to GP practices in Sparkbrook, Balsall Heath and Sparkhill. Many of the neighbourhoods here are among the most deprived in the country.

The scheme means families with persistent or complex issues can be referred in to attend one of two weekly clinics held in Sparkbrook and Balsall Heath, where they experience a model of care that should be the norm, but isn’t.

Programme manager Simarjeet Kaur says a visit can last up to two hours, starting with a visit to nurse Jo, a specialist paediatric nurse, who will carry out a basic health check including height, weight, a check of teeth and oral health, and a first discussion of underlying circumstances. Every child is given a toothbrush and shown how to clean their teeth. Worries are aired. Next they will move along to see a GP, often a paediatric specialist like Dr Bird, who will dive more deeply into health concerns in a half hour appointment.

Around a third of patients are then referred on to one of the family support workers, who will spend time talking through next steps. This may include signposting to other services or longer term, multi-agency case management, depending on need. Help with food and energy costs, youth support, help with domestic abuse, emergency funding, money and debt advice, special needs support, housing advice and mental health interventions. Around 25 Hall Green area families are receiving this level of intensive wraparound support a month.

Among the morning’s visitors on the day of my visit were Ahliya and Sheikh, who we met earlier. They were visiting with their beautiful baby boy, eight month old Muhammed Yunus Sheikh.

They had recently received devastating news that their little one had a rare genetic condition called Wolfs Hirschhorn Syndrome, which was likely to leave him severely disabled for life. “We are praying for a miracle, and for God to give me the strength to be the best mum I can for him,” said Ahliya, who had previously experienced the tragedy of baby loss.

The couple kindly permitted me to sit in as they spoke with family support advisor Antoinette Ifill. Their little lad was under the care of specialists at the hospital, but what the family also needed was help with their own practical and emotional needs too that short GP appointments cannot normally cover.

Inside Sparkbrook Children’s Zone where family support workers Nazmeen Rahimi, left, and Antoinette Ifill, right, are part of the integrated health and wellbeing team.

Showing incredible strength, they talked about the realisation that their son was going to need lifelong care and would be disabled by the syndrome, the impact on the whole family, and their initial reluctance to seek help. Ahliya spoke of ‘a stigma’ around disability in her own community, but said she was determined not to hide her son away. Dad Sheik added: “He is a blessing.”

By the time they left they said they felt they had found a new ‘safe space’ to visit, while also receiving advice about where to get financial support if they need it.

“Coming here has been such a relief and a positive step,” she said. “Without this we would have had to make multiple appointments, make phone calls, queue for appointments.”

She added: “Asian communities in particular are very slow at seeking help. We have a mindset of keeping things in our house, not asking for help. This has given me the chance to offload, without being judged, and to know that we are not alone in this experience.”

Sheik added: “I had no idea this hub existed until last week and it was the first time I have relaxed since we heard the news. We are going through a very difficult situation, others are too, but knowing they are here for less critical situations too is important. We are lucky to have this here, but everyone should have a service like this.”

It is a truly patient centred service, with specialists in one place, and without a clock ticking in the background to say time is up after 10 minutes. Research currently under way by the University of Birmingham is expected to demonstrate that this project doesn’t only help patients, but has long term cost benefits too, keeping more families away from emergency and urgent care.

If, despite all this data and evidence, you are still not sure about the impact of poverty on children, ask any inner-city teacher or family support worker.

Trained primarily to educate children in their ABCs and to pass exams, many find themselves dealing daily with more profound concerns.

Heads like Anna Stevenson at Birches Green Primary in Erdington sum it up: “I used to worry that some children might not have a desk to sit at to do their homework. Now it's much more fundamental than that - do they have a bed to sleep in? Have they had anything to eat? Do they have a coat? Are they coping?"

Particularly in areas of high deprivation, hunger is a common issue in schools. At City Academy we heard about Elliott (not his real name).

Headteacher Rebecca Bakewell said: "When we spoke to him about this, he admitted he was hungry but had not wanted to mention it at home, as he did not want to add to his parents’ worries." When the school first set up a free breakfast club, there were around 20 children who turned up to use it. Now the number is a regular 100 each day.

Ms Bakewell added: “These are children trying to manage adults’ problems and it is heartbreaking.”

Currently all children in state schools in Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 are entitled to free school meals. Older children qualify if their family receives certain benefits or asylum support, or meet an income threshold, or have no recourse to public funds. After benefits, a household has to be earning less than £7,400 a year after tax to qualify for free school meals.

This means many children from working families in poverty aren’t entitled to free school meals. They are known by head teachers as Just About Managing families - JAM for short.

We found a school meals poverty gap exists in Birmingham. Across the country, the number of children getting free school meals is HIGHER than the number living in poverty. In Birmingham, it is the opposite. In 2022/23, when the latest data was available, there were 38.4 per cent of pupils in Birmingham receiving free school meals - when more than 40 per cent were in poverty.

That’s why we agree with the Food Foundation that the threshold to qualify for free school meals needs to be raised. By their calculations, raising the threshold to include every family in poverty would mean 30,000 more children in Birmingham should be receiving free school meals. “There is strong evidence this improves children’s health as well as academic performance and future economic prosperity.”

A recent survey found that almost nine in ten teachers report that hungry children are often excessively tired, with three-quarters feeling that they may exhibit disruptive behaviour. A pilot rollout of Universal Free School Meals found children’s readiness for learning, behaviour and concentration all improved.

Enamul Hoque, head at Newbury School in Aston, spoke of children living in homes where overwhelmed parents resorted to drink and drugs, leaving kids to largely fend for themselves. He set up a ‘family style’ lunch routine after learning some pupils had never eaten at a table.

We spoke to Muhammad Hassan who brought home how close Brummies live to food poverty. Not long ago, he was in a two-income family, enjoying a career in IT support. Currently out of work, he skips meals just to ensure his children eat.

The family rely on income from his wife’s job working 30 hours a week in a care home. Despite this, when we spoke to him, his children were not receiving free school meals.

He said: “We never have enough food. I’ve applied to Birmingham City Council for the children to have free school meals but I’m still waiting to hear back. My wife and I sometimes miss meals ourselves so that the children can eat. It’s so difficult. The children sometimes ask what’s going on.”

The impact of poverty is felt in bellies today, but it drives down potential long term too. Non-disadvantaged pupils in Birmingham are 77% more likely to go on to study at a Russell Group university than those from a disadvantaged background. They are also 250% more likely to get to Oxbridge.

The impact on children is not just seen in the school canteen, but in the foodbanks and projects that operate across the city too. We met mum of five Judy in a foodbank in Quinton. She told us of the struggle of raising her brood in a two bed flat after being let down by a drug addict partner, some days struggling to afford milk.

Foodbank trustee Elaine, who also supports a baby bank initiative, says she is far from alone: "Some of the circumstances that babies and children are living in would make you weep. I worry most about the little ones. I saw a little lad out shopping in the middle of the summer holiday, in his school uniform jumper and trousers, because it was the only clothes he had."

We found that foodbanks across the city are seeing rising demand, at the same time as donations are falling. One much heralded initiative by Birmingham City Council last winter saw money directed from the Government-funded Household Support Fund to help the network of food projects in Birmingham that make up the Food Justice Network. It provided 169 foodbanks, food pantries, food clubs, community kitchens and on-street feeding groups with a grant of £5,000 each to help them purchase food, helping support 24,000 pople each week, including children.

We also learned that a Birmingham food distribution hub is opening soon to support foodbank, food pantries and other food providers, organised by Narthex and Thrive Together Birmingham, funded using the Household Support Fund. Another project will see surplus food from the Birmingham Wholesale Markets distributed to communities through the Active Wellbeing Society and Public Health Birmingham.

Services at risk

Publicly-funded services for and used by children in our city have been stripped back for years - and it’s getting worse. A decade of austerity cuts, totalling about a billion pounds in Birmingham, meant local services were already thin when the Covid pandemic struck in 2020.

That devastating health emergency produced one stand-out positive in our city, as communities rose up collectively to protect their most vulnerable. It brought neighbours together, and the traditional silos that organisations tended to work in were demolished, if only temporarily. Within two years, the Commonwealth Games was putting the city on a global stage and the promise of Birmingham being at the heart of the HS2 line saw local politicians talking of a ‘golden decade’ ahead.

But beneath the surface, major problems were brewing.

Last year, the terrible truth was out - the city council was forced to reveal it had ‘run out of money’. Cuts of nearly £400m have been ordered over two years, council tax has been hiked by 10% and the council’s 10,000 staff have been warned hundreds of jobs are at risk.

New analysis of the cuts and the council tax hikes by University of Birmingham’s Dr Matt Lyons and Prof Kurt Kratena, published September 2024, found that ‘the crisis is likely to be most heavily felt by those on lower incomes’ - not what anyone already worried about child poverty wants to hear.

The failings of the city’s politicians and officials will fall severely on children. Spending on arts organisations, from grassroots schemes to world class music and drama, is being reduced to zero.

Birmingham could soon be a city without a viable council-run youth service, with less early help available for families, and with fewer libraries and community centres than at any time this century - without urgent intervention.

Youth services

Since 2011, 43 youth centres and projects run by Birmingham City Council have closed down. In some cases, charities or private enterprises have stepped in - but many have been lost for good.

Only 16 are still operated by the council - and their future looks perilous.

Actor Idris Elba, launching a new knife crime initiative with the Labour government, has pointed to youth centres and youth workers as a critical ally in the fight to ease violence involving young people and give them new opportunities and aspirations.

The council proposes to cut the already meagre combined youth, careers and 14-19 support services budget of £4.8m by £2.2m this year and £3m next year. It is currently undertaking a review to help shape what it calls ‘a more targeted service that prioritises the most vulnerable’.

But opponents say it will leave a skeleton service, with too few safe spaces and trusted, professional youth workers for young people to access. Craig Pinkney, a highly respected consultant, criminologist and urban youth specialist, voiced his fears that cuts to youth and community services will exacerbate an already dire situation into a ‘catastrophe’.

"We need to keep in mind we lost ten children and young people to violence in a year (2022-23)….there have been over 280 incidents of knife crime (last year).”

Eddie O’Hara, a former social worker turned consultant, founder of charity All Birmingham's Children (ABC) and former lead of the British Association of Social Workers’ Birmingham branch, said the city was facing a ‘perfect storm’.

“Youth services have been completely hit over the head. You have teenagers with no access to services, and there aren’t any preventative services, there are very few police out, so by definition kids are going to get up to things. It’s a perfect storm.

"We need to re-energise the way we think about children and young people in our city. They are our future, our crown jewels, but we are letting them down."

The loss of services can be clearly seen in our map showing the council services open a decade or so ago, and those that still exist.

Youth services are not protected by statute. Councils like Birmingham are not obliged to operate youth centres or employ youth workers, no matter how valuable they prove in opening up opportunities to young people who might otherwise miss out, nor how well they divert youngsters from exploitation, crime and crisis. That seems utterly counter intuitive. That’s why we agree that a yuth service should be a statutory requirement.

We also found, however, that while council-run services were falling away, community organisations were trying to plug the gaps, often with meagre resources. Faith settings in particular have set up their own youth groups and support.

Children’s Services

It’s not just youth services at risk. Children’s services will be cut by £52m this year and £63m next year. The council has ended its annual £8.4m contract for early help services for struggling families (the service has been picked up for now by the children’s trust, but its future is uncertain).

For young people aged 16 to 18 with special needs, there will be no more taxis and minibuses to school or college in a bid to save about £7m a year - instead they are being offered bus passes with travel training attached, or personal travel budgets, including for the most severely disabled and the non verbal. For some parents it means cutting back on working hours, or quitting a job completely, to transport their child to and from schools often miles away, or for their child to have to drop out.

The cuts come at a time when demand for early help and family support is soaring, as our data analysis showed.

Our analysis of social work cases show a big rise. There were 8,114 child and family cases handled by social workers in Birmingham in 2023 - up 39% from 5,824 in 2017. Birmingham Children’s Trust currently has a workforce of 407 qualified social workers.

We also found that in multiple areas, spending on children’s services delivered by the local authority has been in a constant decline - from the network of children’s centres in the city, to overall spending on child-centred projects. Overall we found that the spending on young people in Birmingham is much lower per head here than across the country - Birmingham spends £18 per child a year, compared to £32 per child nationally.

James Thomas, CEO of Birmingham Children’s Trust, said funding early help initiatives, including support projects and children’s centres, had been a constant challenge, “While these services are non-statutory and, in effect, discretionary, we recognise that they are vital in preventing family crisis and the escalation of need to more expensive interventions. Early intervention and prevention are at the core of our ambitions, and we are fully committed to maintaining a level of service for the most vulnerable in our city.”

Libraries

Children and schools have been at the heart of local campaigns to protect community libraries across the city. There are currently 35. But the council is set to reduce the number open full-time (five days a week) to just 10. Of the others, 14 could remain open on a part time basis, and another seven might stay if volunteers step up to run them.

Compared to the harsh effects of health inequalities we’ve spotlighted, this might seem a comparatively ‘soft’ problem. But libraries are a safe space for young people, and offer free digital access that many families don’t have. Author and poet Michael Rosen, part of the campaign to save Birmingham’s libraries, says of why it matters: “If you close libraries, nobody dies – that’s what they think. But what’s happening is it’s society who suffers and people who suffer.”

Transport poverty

Across Scotland, all young people under 22 are entitled to free travel on public transport. It’s an initiative designed to open up education, work and travel experiences for those who can least afford it.

In London, free travel is also the norm for under 18s. In Manchester, teens aged 16 to 18 can travel free.

In Birmingham, there is not yet a similar scheme, but we think there ought to be. Evidence shows that transport poverty is real. Research by the Social Market Foundation shows that 12 per cent of the West Midlands population are trapped in transport poverty.

When Birmingham has tried free transport, it has seen health benefits. Birmingham Women’s and Children’s Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (BWC) conducted a pilot offering free transport to appointments. What it found was an improvement in attendance from areas of high deprivation.

Labour regional mayor Richard Parker has pledged to make tackling transport poverty one of his landmark priorities.

Where you find poverty, you find crime and exploitation - and sadly, Birmingham’s 104,433 children in poverty are altogether too easy to exploit.

We spoke to Adam, a one-time drug runner recruited into gangs aged 14 on his deprived estate. He said: “I’m not just one, I’m one in a million. There are always little kids being targeted.”

He told how he and others in the County Lines trade, including girls, were:

• Ordered to transport wraps of drugs inside their body cavities to avoid detection;
• Sent to ‘bandos’ around the country - abandoned houses or flats that double as crack dens to deal to desperate addicts;
• Forced to live among adult addicts, at high risk of physical and sexual assault, often without sleep for days on end;
• Carried a knife at all times for protection from addicts and rival gangs.

He has friends involved who have been stabbed, beaten up, and threatened with guns - with some still trapped by debt bondage.

An alarming inquiry this year found that the criminal exploitation of the city’s young people was 'becoming more organised and deadly'. It uncovered sick gangs manipulating children and young people into committing crimes.

Liam Teasdale, who was also recruited into West Midlands gangs, told us: "I was groomed into this lifestyle, I just didn't know it. I thought they cared about me, we were family, I was one of the boys, one of the big men. But it is fake. It is a lie. There is nothing glamorous about it."

In 2023, child criminal exploitation was deemed a factor in 219 cases that social services assessed in Birmingham - and on the rise. Gangs were deemed a factor in 124 assessments in Birmingham last year. West Midlands police investigated 507 potential cases of modern slavery in 2023 where the victim was a child.

A recent report argued that a number of children in the youth justice system are being punished for being poor. Report author Dr Alex Chard said: “Poverty, disadvantage and social exclusion, linked with systemic failure to address their needs, creates a conveyor belt which propels vulnerable children towards exploitation and crime.”

Our research found clear links between youth knife crime and deprivation. In the first four months of this year, paramedics attended 154 stabbing reports in Birmingham. Small Heath, Saltley, Ward End, Tile Cross and Handsworth were the locations of the most incidents - all of them areas which are among the 10% most deprived wards in the country. Many of those injured, or those wielding the knife, were children and young people.

Children living in the most deprived areas of England are 73% more likely to enter the Youth Justice system than those from richer areas.

It takes a village to raise a child, goes the popular saying. The journalists who exposed heart-breaking poverty for this report also saw heart-warming displays of resilience, courage and kindness, in abundance.

We saw how communities, charities and volunteers are rallying round to protect and raise up kids who might have less, but deserve every opportunity. We saw young homeless people turned activists, amazing young people and their mentors pressing for change, and survivors who have turned difficult experiences into a strength.

We paid a visit to St John the Baptist Catholic Primary School in Smith's Wood in the summer holidays, where staff gave up valuable time off to put on activities and food for kids who might otherwise have little.

Over in a park in Acocks Green, kids from tots to teens were joining in free summer holiday activities, making homemade play-dough, joining in a mass footy match, and creating a stop-start movie using clay as part of an initiative organised by the Birmingham Children’s Play Care Network. A group of mums swapped stories while they threaded ‘jewels’ with their youngsters.

Free summer holiday activities at Acocks Green

We saw how communities come together to support their most vulnerable, in foodbanks and in their neighbourhoods, seeking to keep kids safe and open up opportunities.

External grants, privately funded support, and the love of volunteers were all pivotal to their success. Faith organisations in the city are behind powerful initiatives to prop up families and keep children safe - running initiatives from parenting classes to second hand uniform giveaways, hosting youth clubs and groups for isolated mums, providing financial aid and in some cases housing for struggling families.

Much of the work currently under way, however, is being propped up by one fund, the national Household Support Fund, and heard there are genuine worries about a future for the city without it.

The £1 billion national fund was originally a one-off grant in the Covid winter of 2020. It has been renewed since, but is due to expire again in March 2025. In Birmingham the cash strapped council has used it as a vital lifeline.

It has been used to help fund a network of nearly 300 Warm Welcome hubs used by families. They have received grant funding to purchase supplies and equipment, run activities, and pay their own energy bills as well as providing crisis payments for users.

It has also funded emergency aid for foodbanks, a crisis line for residents, a benefits advice service and covered individual emergency payments and other direct support for families, all delivered in collaboration with charities, businesses and communities. Other local schemes include:

• Hardship Support Fund, providing direct financial assistance to citizens, backed by Birmingham Voluntary Service Council’s (BVSC) Hardship Grant Community Fund, providing emergency grants of up to £200.
• Collaboration with the private sector and the Local Welfare Provision team, over £500k of energy top ups were distributed to thousands of households this year, including those with pre-payment meters.
• The Heart of England community foundation also commissioned 28 providers to conduct outreach activities to maximise income, connecting various community venues such as faith-based spaces, foodbanks, warming shelters, libraries, and other community hubs.

Richard Brooks, city council strategy director, fears that without the fund, some of these vital lifelines will be cut. “Most councils are now so financially pressed that they cannot fund any such programmes from their mainstream resources. In the case of Birmingham, we are legally prevented from doing so by our wider financial situation.”

Fred Rattley, CEO at Thrive Together Birmingham, one of the partners in many Household Support Fund backed initiatives, said of the scheme: “Birmingham City Council’s Cost of Living team have used the Household Support Fund really imaginatively, working collaboratively with voluntary and community sector partners to initiate activities that address core poverty issues which the council could not otherwise have supported. These include the Safe Sleep and Dream Team schemes (seeking to end bed poverty), the Warm Welcome network of neighbourhood community spaces, an initiative to tackle damp and mould, health and wellbeing projects and food poverty initiatives.

“But the way the fund operates, on a short term basis with urgent spending targets, means all of these projects are on a constant knife-edge of uncertainty and forward planning is not possible. We urge the Government to make this a permanent feature of its funding plans for local government.”

Thank you to the families and young people who allowed us to share their stories in this project.

Thank you to the organisations who contributed directly and indirectly including Birmingham Children’s Trust, Birmingham City Council, Birmingham and Solihull Integrated Care System and Birmingham Children’s Hospital, Birmingham Citizens, Thrive Together Birmingham, the city’s food justice network, Birmingham Play Care Network, Barnardos, Spurgeons, the Birmingham Voluntary Services Council and all its members, Birmingham Fair Housing Campaign, Shelter, Birmingham Race Impact Group and many more city projects.

Special thanks to every single frontline worker, volunteer, activist, teacher, play worker, politician, housing officer, social worker, medic, parent and young person who daily try to break the child poverty cycle.

This is a joint Birmingham Live and Reach PLC Data Unit production on behalf of our city’s young people