Baby Banks

Hannah Peck, founder of Baby Basics, is busy. From a church storeroom in Sheffield, she runs a charity that provides essential baby products to vulnerable new and expectant mothers. In the four years since the project began, the number of requests for goods has never been higher.

Similar to a food bank, donations from the public are sorted and handed out to local people in need. All users of the service are referred by healthcare professionals such as midwives, health visitors and social workers.

Volunteers prioritise requests according to the soonest baby due date. Since 2009 the charity has given out more than 1,000 moses baskets, each packed full of nappies, bottles, clothing and bedding.

Peck makes it clear that there isn’t a particular type of woman they help. “Poverty doesn’t just affect someone who is unemployed. We give out items to families on a low income, women fleeing domestic violence, teenage mothers and asylum seekers,” she says.

“We have definitely seen an increase in need over the last 12 months. Our referring agencies all report that people are really struggling”.

Baby Basics covers Sheffield and the surrounding area. At the beginning of this year, following discussions with local health visitors, a second branch was opened in Northampton. In the first 10 months, volunteers received 110 referrals. Similar projects have sprung up in Gloucestershire, Bedfordshire and Milton Keynes and many food banks now also provide baby products.

Research by the National Childbirth Trust (NCT) estimates that the potential market for this type of service is between 10-20% of all births in the UK. This could mean that up to 150,000 babies may be born each year without basic care products. In response to the obvious need, the NCT is rolling out a scheme called Little Bundles in Cambridge, Trafford and Basildon. Again, the project is run in the same way as a food bank.

Philip Rosser, head of volunteering at NCT says: “With poverty in the UK increasing alongside continuing economic difficulties, disadvantaged parents and their children are more vulnerable than ever before. By offering basic baby care products we can fill a gap while people are waiting for benefits to come through”.

According to Save The Children, 1.6 million children are growing up in severe poverty in the UK. Because of this, in 2011, the charity launched a crisis grant programme, Eat, Sleep, Learn, Play. It is designed to help children and families in desperate need by providing them with essential items such as cots, children’s beds, cookers and toys. To date the project has reached more than 8,000 children in the UK.

Rosalind Bragg, director of the MaternityAction charity, is not surprised by the rise in demand for help for new mothers: “The government has axed the health in pregnancy grant, restricted the Sure Start maternity grant and frozen child benefit. These changes come on top of well-documented increases to the cost of living. Families are struggling to make ends meet – they need support not cuts to benefits,” she says.

Suzanne Ryder, 27, knows only too well the difference that the support of a baby bank can make. For the last two and a half years she has lived in temporary accommodation in Walthamstow, north-east London, with daughters Daniella, four, and Amelia, one. Unable to work owing to long-term health problems, Ryder receives incapacity benefit. “Things are really tight at the moment. Once my gas and electricity are paid we are left with very little,” she says.

In October, staff at the Higham Hill children’s centre, near where Ryder and her daughters live, decided to open a baby bank. “The first time I turned to them, I felt so ashamed but we really needed the help,” says Ryder. For every item she receives from the bank she says she will give back another item of clothing that her own children have outgrown.

Impact

She continues: “The baby bank has provided me with clothes for both of my daughters and baby food for my youngest. The staff say they will keep a look out for a rain cover for my daughter’s pushchair because I just can’t afford to buy one.”

Lisa Hayde, family and outreach support worker at the centre – which is funded by the local council, Sure Start, the Big Lottery Fund and various grants – says in its first three months, the baby bank has received more than 30 referrals. “Cuts to benefits, low wages and the increased cost of living are all having an impact. We provide items such as clothes, toys and food. We also work alongside the Salvation Army to provide larger items such as cots and pushchairs,” she says.

Baby banks have not yet spread to the north-east of England, but the charity Children North East reports that in a region where one in four children lives below the poverty line and parents are struggling to put food on the table, any service that would relieve the pressure these families are facing would be very welcome.

The Child Poverty Action Group praises the volunteers providing baby banks to fill the holes in the social safety net, but says the holes should not be there.

“It is the grim but inevitable consequence of cuts like the government’s scrapping of the baby element of tax credits, which had previously provided a vital £545 to the poorest families to help with the first year of a child’s life”, says chief executive, Alison Garnham.

She adds: “We know we are failing as a decent society when parents must rely on emergency aid for the basic things their baby needs.”