A clearly riled Chris Cooke, the mayor of Middlesbrough, said: “We get told a lot by people outside this place what we are. There is another side.” They were all reacting to a report published this week by the children’s commissioner, Rachel de Souza, titled The Childhood Lottery, in which she declared childhood to be in “a state of emergency”. The report drew on a “landmark dataset” that “brings together 162 measures of children’s lives to build a comprehensive picture of the areas in England where it is the hardest to grow up”.
The metrics included everything from child poverty to exclusion rates to poor air quality. And at the bottom was Middlesbrough. The Guardian visited the town this week and spoke to children and professionals about growing up there.
No one denied there were many challenges, but equally no one thought the label was helpful. At a busy, buzzy youth club in the residential suburb of Coulby Newham, children aged 10 and up were making papier-mache Halloween decorations, cooking, playing table tennis and, outside on a strikingly mild October evening, getting ready to play dodge ball. Hannah*, 15, said her life was good but she knew it was not the same for others.
I love Albert Park and the Dorman Museum. I love going to the football. I love coming to youth club and making friends,” she said.
A boy looked confused when asked if it was hard being a child in Middlesbrough. Middlesbrough is too cold and scruffy.” Wayne Mason, a former soldier who is chief executive of Linx Youth Project, which runs the club, said of the report: “We are disappointed. What it’s doing is attaching yet another label to Middlesbrough and its young people, and we already have many, many labels.
It’s disappointing … all this negativity attached to the town.” He and the project’s deputy, Eilís Sexton, were at the club but could not stay long as the local Rotary club was about to give them a much-needed and much-appreciated cheque. Sexton was worried about the message the report sent out. It is quite demoralising for them,” she said.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
