Doctor and charity’s fears for youngsters
It has had no safeguarding referrals through from any of the B&Bs it uses under lockdown, although it admits hotel staff have not necessarily had training to spot issues unless they have taken it upon themselves to go and get it.
Support workers in its own homeless team, who are trained in safeguarding, had to ‘pause’ faceto-face visits due to Public Health England advice during the pandemic, but continued to speak with families remotely.
However, at least one of the hotels Manchester town hall is using for families is the same as one investigated by the M.E.N. in 2018, where a pregnant single mum told of us feeling unsafe and of finding drugs in her baby’s pram.
Dr Cockman says on one hotel visit during lockdown she was eyed up herself by men hanging out on the doorstep.
“Safeguarding is the biggest worry,” she says. “When you think what happened in Rochdale, you walk into some of them and you’ve got men standing outside and also teenage girls standing outside. There’s no control.
“The parents have lots of responsibilities and you could have several teenagers all in one tiny bedroom. Then you’ve got males stood outside and young teens, incredibly vulnerable, with access to men giving them attention.”
Manchester council said parents are reminded that they are responsible for their children when they move into a hotel. It told the M.E.N. it was ‘a bit of a leap’ to connect the men’s attitude towards an adult woman with a risk to children, adding it would never place ‘known sex offenders’ in accommodation which could put others at risk.
The charity remains worried. Shared Health’s research has focused on Greater Manchester specifically and Manchester in particular, given the scale of the city’s crisis. Manchester currently has around 1,700 homeless families, the same as at the end of 2019, before the impact of the looming recession. But the charity’s findings are not unique.
A paper for the Lancet medical journal in May warned young children in temporary accommodation during the pandemic are in an ‘invisible plight that might not seem obvious to most people because they’re not on the streets.’
Yet they were potentially among the most susceptible to viral infection due to underlying health conditions such as asthma, while unlikely to be able to self isolate or socially distance. Their findings match with those of Shared Health, including around the risk presented to them by the virus itself.
“Many families have to live in a single bedroom with shared kitchen and toilet facilities, causing overcrowding and making selfisolation impossible in confined space,” wrote a group of researchers from University College London’s public health department at Great Ormond Street Hospital.
“Often, children have inadequate space to crawl or play and no access to fresh air. Second, no regulation on temporary accommodation exists regarding what is deemed suitable or how long someone can stay in temporary housing.
“Third, handwashing and hygiene are reduced because of minimal access to soap, water, disinfectants and bathrooms.
“Another issue is that no face-toface contact with general practitioners and health outreach services is available, including health visitors, which limits routine checks such as early identification of need and risk.”
The Childhood Trust, a Londonbased charity that focuses on child poverty, published a report entitled Children in Lockdown earlier this month.
It reeled off concerns about the physical and mental health impacts on poor children during the pandemic, of food poverty and educational loss.
The report’s section on children in temporary accommodation during lockdown cites the Lancet’s research and echoes Shared Health’s findings 200 miles away.
Its author Laurence Guinness believes both the government and councils are in ‘denial’ about the broader crisis, before, during and after lockdown.
“The stress on children in these situations becomes toxic, because the child has no ability to resolve their problems for themselves and neither do the parents. The pandemic has multiplied that exponentially,” he says. Noting that children’s services budgets have been cut by up to 30 per cent over the past decade, he agrees councils are ‘in a difficult position.’ But he says the system isn’t currently working for children.
“We need to acknowledge that and do something about it. To ignore it is morally indefensible.”
Shared Health insists there are constructive solutions to be had, despite the crippling financial situation facing town halls. That includes proper safeguarding training for hotel staff, as well as officially giving homeless children the same basic rights to education and health support as children in the care system legally have.
It also means – crucially – linking up Greater Manchester’s services so families do not suddenly find themselves in a hotel miles
away without a GP or any means to get their child to school, with no school nurse noticing the changes in the child’s behaviour, nobody keeping tabs on what’s happening.
Manchester council insists the region does work in partnership and share information, but the charity says it has seen multiple examples of families placed miles away, slipping through the holes in the Swiss cheese. The impact, it says, has been clear.
“One family I saw, the mum said ‘what can I do? My son started night-time wetting again,’ says Dr Cockman of her visits under lockdown.
“A ten-year-old, so much older than you would normally expect. You’ve got a symptom there probably because of mental health and trauma.
“The child who is slightly delayed walking may eventually walk on time, but that kind of impact on their body leads to problems for the rest of their lives.
“So for me, it’s the linking up of services. There was a problem pre-Covid as well. You’ve got these families plonked somewhere new and they’ve no longer got that link with their GP or their paediatrician appointment.”
It doesn’t have to be this way, she insists.
“We’ve got a massive health issue in a really solvable population. That’s the disappointment. If you intervene, you can stop it.”
She fears that if the Greater Manchester system doesn’t act quickly now, when there are fewer families in B&Bs than usual, it will miss its chance. In the same way it has galvanised to work on rough sleeping, this crisis will require authorities to make it a political priority.
One official spoken to for this piece notes Greater Manchester does not yet have the scale of the crisis facing London boroughs, but that means now is the time to act. Numbers here have already been rocketing for at least four years, they point out, arguing that the region should be buying up property for safe accommodation instead of relying on hotels. And when recession hits and the government’s ban on evictions is lifted in August, councils already know the family homelessness tap will be turned back on – and hard. Already, hotels are seeing increases in referrals.
But Dr Cockman admits that even within the system itself, professionals are often unaware that these children exist. If she hadn’t started doing outreach during the lockdown, she would not have seen the situation for what it is either. “I’ve never known a group that’s just been so off the radar of anyone,” she says.