The Child of the North: Building a fairer future after COVID-19……. Report picture of inequality

Widening inequalities for children in the North of England cost billions, increase poverty and cost children’s lives

The Child of the North is not one child but many and each of their experiences is unique. They are brought up in different places, educated in many different ways and go on to live very different lives.

There is no one experience which speaks to every child across the region, but there is an overall picture painted by this report of inequality between children in the North and the rest of the country.

Childhood is life defining and shaped by factors from before birth through to adulthood. A child’s mother’s health, the care they get, through family or the care system, what house they live in, what food they eat, how often they get to run around, their education, their opportunities. All of these things have a big impact and, as this report shows, the average Child of the North is disadvantaged from the start across all of these measures.

It shows decades of under-funding in children’s services has had a devastating impact. That children in the region are more likely to grow up in poverty, in disordered families, more likely to be less active and eat worse food. And that poverty continues to grow meaning a child growing up in the North is facing enormous challenges their contemporaries in other areas of the country do not have to tackle.

What is also crystal clear is that the pandemic has worsened these already poor outcomes further.

Children in the North of England spent more time in lockdown than those elsewhere – which meant their education and very often their mental health suffered. Their parents were also more isolated.

The report speaks of the ‘toxic stress’ of poor parental mental health, exposure to violence, substance misuse, and abuse and or neglect that negatively influence a person’s health and wellbeing across the life-course. It is our society’s responsibility to collectively come together to get rid of that toxicity.

To care for a child, we need to care about their choices, their future, their equality. Childhood should not be something that happens to children but something they have a say in and have control over. We must put children’s rights at the heart of our society.

Inequality has been shown to be one of the most damaging things to society. This report is a call to government, to educators, to all of us who are participants in this society, of our duty to gift our children equality, no matter where they are born.