Two Yorkshire areas among top three hardest places for children in England to grow up according to new ‘Childhood Lottery’ report 

On Monday 19 October, Children’s Commissioner for England Dame Rachel de Souza released “The Childhood Lottery Report” with an intent on uncovering the “hardest places to grow up in England”. The top three consists of two areas within Yorkshire. Middlesbrough sits first and Bradford sits third. 

The report extensively analyses the challenges that children and young people face across all of England’s local authorities by using over 160 data metrics. It examines a range of factors such as family life, education outcomes, personal safety, access to health services, and poverty to map childhood disadvantages and disparities across the country. 

Each local authority area is attributed an overall score out of 960 through this comprehensive compilation of data. Middlesbrough scores 408, Hounslow scores 460, and Bradford scores 471, making them the three most challenging places for children to grow up in England according to the report’s findings. In contrast, the three least challenging places for a child to grow up are Cheshire East, scoring 730, Merton, scoring 714, and Surrey, scoring 708. 

The Children’s Commissioner’s report confirms and confronts the idea of the ‘postcode lottery’. In the foreword of the report, Dame Rachel de Souza writes that where children are brought up “will define who they will become, because of what they experience and the variation in the services which will be available to them.” Following the findings of the report she then declares a “national emergency” in its conclusion and suggests that governmental action and changes are of high urgency in tackling England’s childhood inequalities. 

In response, the Mayor of Middlesbrough, stated by the report as being the hardest place for a child to grow up in England, has declared his anger regarding the label that has been put on the children of Middlesbrough by the report and has invited Prime Minister Andy Burnham to visit “the incredible work taking place across our town”, according to Tesside Live.

Words by Daisy Ireland Kelly-Green