More children live in 'severe poverty' in Manchester than anywhere else in Britain.
A report by the charity, Save The Children, reveals that a staggering 27 per cent of youngsters – 25,000 – are blighted by the 'shameful' scandal.
There are fears the crisis could worsen as unemployment worsens and government-driven budget cuts bite.
Save the Children is calling on Chancellor George Osborne to draw up an emergency plan to tackle the problem.
The report highlights a case in Gorton, Manchester where eleven people live in one two bedroom terraced house – three adults and eight children.
It says the adults often go without a hot meal to ensure the children eat.
In Salford 20 per cent of children – 8,000 – are in severe poverty.
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Sally Copley, of Save The Children, said: “Children up and down the country are going to sleep at night in homes with no heating, without eating a proper meal and without proper school uniforms to put on in the morning.
“No child should be born without a chance. It is a national scandal that 1.6m children are growing up in severe poverty.
She called on the Chancellor to announce plans in the next budget to bring jobs to the poorest areas, to increase financial support for low-income families by paying more for childcare costs enabling parents to work.
According to the charity, a lone parent family with one child aged under 14 in severe poverty is living on an in income of less than £7,000 and a couple with two children under 14 is on less than £12,500.
The charity measures severe poverty by assessing the number of families which earn less than 50 per cent of the average income, and miss out on house insurance, saving, and family holidays.
The levels of unemployment and low paid part time work are also measured.
Mrs Copley said: “These families are also going without things that many of us take for granted; such as separate bedrooms for older boys and girls, not being able to properly celebrate birthdays and not being able to build friendships by having children round for tea.”
She said that at present the government had no official way of measuring how many children were caught in severe poverty.
“If the government is to fulfil its commitments on child poverty it must find a way of counting these children in greatest need. At the moment these children are hidden from official view, and their plight unrecognised.
“If these children are to have a future, we must acknowledge their desperate need and urgently target government help towards them.”
Graham Stringer, Labour MP for Blackley, said he was 'saddened but not surprised' by the report and slammed the poverty figures as 'shameful'.
He told the M.E.N: “It's an appalling situation and I'm aware that there are many families in the city who are living in dire circumstances.
"The government need to direct money towards the poorest areas, like Manchester, but instead they are taking it away - and that is completely wrong.
"I am concerned that the situation will only get worse with the government cuts targeting the most vulnerable and the poorest communities.
"It is absolutely terrible and shows once again that the government doesn't care about Manchester, they are only bothered about looking after the south of England."
| Council | No. of children
in severe poverty |
% of children
in severe poverty |
|---|---|---|
| Manchester | 25000 | 27% |
| Salford | 8000 | 20% |
| Oldham | 9000 | 19% |
| Rochdale | 8000 | 18% |
| Bolton | 8000 | 17% |
| Tameside | 7000 | 17% |
| Wigan | 9000 | 15% |
| Bury | 5000 | 15% |
| Stockport | 7000 | 14% |
| Trafford | 5000 | 12% |
Coun Sheila Newman, Executive Member for Children's Services at Manchester council said: "Save the Children have produced a useful and comprehensive report about severe child poverty nationally and also locally here in Manchester.
"It will come as no surprise to the many professionals working with children and families in the city that in Manchester double the national rate of children live in poverty.
"Manchester has areas of incredible deprivation and need, and we have been working hard as a local authority over the last ten years to address this.
"The best way of tackling child poverty is to get parents into work. Manchester's top priority is tackling worklessness.
“We want to make sure that children living in poverty have the same life chances as their peers and exam results for children on Free School Meals have been regularly improving, reducing the gap between them and children not on Free School Meals.
“We have seen real improvements but there can be no quick fix when you're talking about generations of worklessness or lack of aspiration in families.
"What concerns me now is how we are going to be able to keep this momentum of change going in the face of massive cuts to our funding.
"We are of course determined to do everything we can to continue to help the many children and their families who need our support, and have prioritised this work in our budget plans."
The graphic below shows the rates of children living in severe poverty in each local authority area around Britain:
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So, following on from yesterday's MEN headline, Manchester is a better place to live than London but only if you're an adult?
i am a single mum to 3 girls we live in a nice house we eat healthy meals every day and they have nice clean clothes every day, and yes i go out to work and my oldest two girls of 15 and 17 also have saturday jobs and i bet we have less money coming in than a single mum of 3 kids on benefits who has her rent paid get free school meals and uniform aswell as free laptops and internet (all of which i have to buy for my children ) these families who cry poverty probably smoke, drink and have full sky package a flat screen tv and leather settee. A uniform can cost next to nothing in superstores and if you food shop at the right time you can get reduced meat to make a healthy meal.
Something else for Pat Karney to crow about!
There is nothing wrong with the benefits system. (apart from the fact they are given out to freely) Unfortunately the reason children are living in poverty is because of how the parents choose to spend the benefits. It is heartbreaking to read that children are going out stealing to feed their younger siblings, but unfortunately until the parents of these children wake up, come off the drugs/alcohol, give up the cigs and put their kids first, this will always be a problem. There are obviously more selfish parents in Mcr than anywhere else.
So here we have another arm of the left establishment setting out a report that is taken as gospel and is then used by the Labour aristocracy to attack the coalition..
You would easily forget that we have had a Socialist government for 13 years and a Socialist council for decades, anything shameful about these figures is Labour shame.Their solutions of giving handouts, creating dependency and employing thousands of "poverty pimps" who get jobs on the back of other peoples misfortunes doesnt work.
Labours policies gave failed the poorest in society they have no right to use their failures to make partisan attacks on the coalition.
If your kids are living in poverty, you have a choice, some parent's go out to work, and get money for their kids, some manage on child benefit. by budgeting and struggling. so their kids, get good meals. and manage to shop around and get them clothes. putting their kids first...
then there are the ones, who spend their money on,, drink, drugs, and cigs, first...
you have a choice, the choice is how much you love your kids......
If they can't afford it then why do people have so many kids? 1 or 2 may be a mistake but 8 is just stupid
I have kids and me and my partner both work full time. My kids are taken to childcare in the morning before school and then taken from school to childcare and i pick them up around 6:15pm so how the lady who goes without food to feed her kids finds the excuse she can only get a job between the hours of 10am - 2pm is because either she is unaware she would get working tax credits to pay for the childcare or she knows this excuse is acceptable for the job centre to keep her on benefits at home.
What a load of rubbish! They don't know what poverty is with all the benefits around. In my childhood children played in the streets without socks and shoes because parents couldb't afford luxuries like socks and shoes.
WOW! what a result after 13 years of labour domination and far many more years of labour council domination in greater manchester.
What an improvement eh :-) Hands down for voting Labour next time eh folks :-)
Tragically sad news, truly shocking and a great mark of shame on our city.
A lot of these comments seem to focus on a small minority of genuinely lazy and manipulative people. Many are genuinely struggling and would be worse off working part time than on unemployment. I could go on and on and on about the people in this country and this area who live in poverty through no fault of their own.
However, I'm more amazed witht the lack of concern for these children from some posters. Who cares if their mum is an alcoholic or makes poor decisions. It's not their fault! We need to find a way to protect the money that is supposed to be spent on children, invest more in rehabilitation and changing attitudes and, ultimately- take children away from people who constantly put their own needs first.
Some parents are selfish. 'Poverty stricken' homes always have a nice plasma tv, a bulldog type animal, and a hefty 30 a day smoking habit.
Even porridge is out of reach of the poors' purse. Back to the odd sugar butty.
Did Graham Stringer say "shameful and not surprised"? Of course he was not surprised it`s with his support the last goverment allowed this kind of situation to continue. Surley he meant he was ashamed about this shameful thing having been allowed. They had an oppurtunity to help a lot of families during the reconstruction period in Manchester to improve many lives with the chance of giving them employment, but as Tony Blair said on coming into power "migration will be a good thing for the UK" and Mr Stringer went along with this the oppurtunities were lost. They could have simperly put in place a policy that the construction work and other related jobs from this must have a good and reasonable percentage of home grown local labour and staff, rather than the sites and jobs being flooded by migrants and in many cases they were in the majority workforce employed.
There are many other issue as mentioned by other posters incuding drugs, alcohol, smoking, the idle and the lazy but nothing has been done and that is something that has been allowed and maybe even encouraged by the mis/selfish managent of this country and its councils during the Labour years and not something that has just arisen in recent months. Don`t be fooled by these people like Stringer and Karney into thinking any different. they shouldn`t just be ashamed they should go, we can no longer afford this failure to continue and they have been a big part of the cause.
If the parents spent the child benefit on the kids instead of on mobile phones & clothes for themselves then things might be different. This is the workshy parents who's career is having kids to mild the state out of benefits, not the working ones who I applaud.
There are many working adults who are on the poverty line, unlike the benefit culture gang, have a look into that eh
The way out of poverty is through education, but apart from a couple of areas Manchester is one big council estate and with that you get people with little education and no work ethic so their kids grow up the same. Thick parents don't see the value of a good education and the kids have no aspirations, they don't know any different from getting pregnant at 15/16 and getting a flat and the father of the kids having nothing to do with them, for them that is normal, they don't know any different. Educating these children that there is more to life than what they see around them is the answer but with parents that couldn't care less about their kids education it will not be easy.
I dont know where these fatcs or polls come from i really dont.
As spme one quite rightly pointed out manchester is better to live in than rome,newyork and london????? all these city's have a far greater revenue than manchester yet manchester comes on top of best to live in and yet its the poorest for kids.....make your mind up.
This is funny as looking at the poll manchester comes first and salford comes second,now isnt salford really prospering the bbc moved there the whole city is being regenerated and this is from some one who was born and bred in salford,but now live in rochdale which in the daily tabloids is the benefits epicentre of the uk....lol who makes up these polls rochdale should be no 1 manchester and salford are rich compared to rochdale.
A few quotes in the article from various people (and an interesting comment from Angela Payne (thumbs up Angela!), but nothing from Gerald Kaufmann? He's been a Member of Parliament for Manchester Gorton since 1983. Historically Gorton has had high bouts of unemployment, crime and now this report on poverty. Does this man do anything in or for his elected ward? I've noticed he asks questions in Parliament about Gorton, but what has he actually done in the last 28 years since he was elected for the community itself. What funding has he secured and used? Some one please educate me.
Benefits wrongly encouraged people to have children they couldn't afford. Having babies meant you got put to the top of the list for a house and additional benefits to support them. This has to be changed.
HOWEVER - these children are living in poverty now, through no fault of their own. It isn't their fault they were born to irresponsible parents, and unless they are helped now, they will only perpetuate the cycle.
According to the charity, a lone parent family with one child aged under 14 in severe poverty is living on an in income of less than £7,000 and a couple with two children under 14 is on less than £12,500.
Now ets just disect that. A charity with an axe to grind has arbitraily decided to set the poverty bar at a level which fits their objectives. Suppose they'd chosen to set it at £6000, or £5000 what then?
This crude method of measurement excludes working families, and takes no account of housing benefit, council tax benefit, free prescriptions, school meals, etc etc. It also takes no account of income tax & NI a working parent would have to pay.
A single adult could be claiming as much as £13150 and still be included in the poverty survey when housing benefits are added back, a working adult would need to be earning over £15000 to clear the equivalent after deductions, when the other benefits are taken into account the figure rises closer to £17500. When two adults are in the family the figure rises to around the £25000 mark.
So if you are a two parent family with an income of £25000 or less then this report would by implication regard you as living in extreme poverty. Only it won't because you won't be counted in - only those on benefits.
Why should only those in receipt of benefits be counted? Benefit levels have not changed since Liebour were in power so why is this being raised now? It couldn't have anything to do with a left wing charity wanting to stir things up for a Tory coalition government could it?
Wh is it the worst in the country? Shouldn't our Labour council (in power for decades) change tack?
Tony Blair said that he would eradicate child poverty. Why didn't he?
Child benefits went to record levels so why are they still skint?
We don't get a very good press in Manchester do we. Perhaps money should be diverted to prjects such as helping the poor rather than on superficial sculptures and stupid money refitting the Town Hall. Just a thought.
My utmost admiration for Angela Payne who put her comments on this site,you are a real mum
love, and you should be treated with the highest respect for how you are coping.
I bet your children are very proud of mum.
I seem to remember the labour government saying they would eliminate child poverty!!.....like most of their promises, it has failed spectacularly and has cost the taxpayer billions in the process.