LEEDS, 2020

workers, food aid providers and countless charities are bringing hope into the lives of children in these difficult times.

“Leeds city council last month announced an extra £1.6million in funding to provide for children, despite pressures on its budget.

“For many of us working in this area it is a privilege to be part of a city where people work together to support the poorest children.”

The situation worsens in school holidays. “We see children eating nothing but bread and margarine. We put food on the table and provide games and activities, helping 5,000 children.”

It’s important, he argues, to value the basic community – family. “However, the family looks very different to 50 years ago. Friendship and listening is the best sort of help you can get.”

One parent who has benefited from this approach is Jason White, 47, a father of six who came to the foodbank after a nine-week delay in getting any benefits. “I was on Universal Credit but no matter how much I pleaded at the Jobcentre, they didn’t listen. I had to come to the foodbank and eventually I got work here.” Charities and churches are tackling despair and the council’s child poverty strategy, titled Thriving, will run until 2022, with a unique Child Poverty Impact Board.

Cllr Fiona Venner, executive member for children and families, says: “Child poverty halved under the last Labour government but has risen under 10 years of austerity.

“There are now more foodbanks than branches of Mcdonald’s in Britain.

“As a Labour council, we cannot lift children out of poverty, but we are determined to do everything we can to mitigate child poverty.”

Under the slogan “We are childfriendly Leeds”, the council says no family or child should be ashamed of being poor. But the cruel fact is that they are. And that hasn’t changed.

On the Belle Isle estate looking across at the city skyline, a young mother agreed: “Yes, there is still child poverty here.” That she was too shy to give her name suggests the shame attached to it lingers, despite official warm words to the contrary.