The mayor of Middlesbrough has hit out at a report which describes the town as the hardest place to grow up in the country.
Labour Mayor Chris Cooke leads Middlesbrough Council, and the authority area has been named the most challenging place to be a child in the whole of England.
Children’s Commissioner Dame Rachel de Souza has compiled a report, titled The Postcode Lottery, in which she repeatedly cites Middlesbrough as a tough place to be a kid, and gives the town a lower score than every other council area in the country.
The score is calculated using nearly 100 scored metrics, including the number of children who went missing, exclusion rate in mainstream schools, and attendance at NHS dental visits.
Labour MP for Middlesbrough and Thornaby East, Andy McDonald, said he feels “regret” for the decision to publish the findings as a league table as it “does not tell the full story”.
Mayor Cooke has said that he is “angry” that the town’s children have received a label they “don’t deserve” and has written to Prime Minister Andy Burnham and invited him to Middlesbrough to see “the incredible work taking place every day across our town”.
Mayor Cooke, who grew up in the care system, says fighting for children in the town is a “deeply personal issue”, adding that many of the findings in this latest research are “sadly nothing new”, attributing them to generational social problems, inequalities in funding and national policies going back decades.
As well as voicing his frustration about the town’s children being labelled as they have been in Dame Rachel’s report, Mayor Cooke added: “I’m also angry for the thousands of people in our town who put their heart and soul into giving our young people the best chance in life.
“They will feel frustrated that we have another set of headlines that can damage hope and limit ambition.”
Dame Rachel wrote in the foreword: “Every day in England, on average, about 1,600 children are born. After a short time, something defining happens to those children.
“They leave hospital and travel home. This will be the most important journey of their lives. Where that journey ends, in what postcode, will define who they will become, because of what they experience and the variation in the services which will be available to them.”
She said the decision to list the 20 toughest places to grow up was “difficult” and emphasised that the ranking was not a review of the local authorities.
Dame Rachel added that some of the things that she had seen and heard during the compiling of the report had left her “utterly disgusted”.
Based on some of the data in the report, Dame Rachel said she visited Middlesbrough two weeks ago to hear from affected children.
The Children’s Commissioner has now called for a national Children’s Emergency Fund, to bring services above a minimum level when “they are found to be below par”.
Another recommendation would see Tees Valley Combined Authority (along with every strategic authority across the country) appoint either a deputy mayor or designated leader for children and families. Dame Rachel concludes that the current approach to policy making has “failed” children in places such as Middlesbrough.
In his letter to Mr Burnham, Mayor Cooke said: “We are pulling all the levers we can in Middlesbrough to turn the tide on decades of social problems that impact children’s lives.
“We’re opening youth clubs in every ward, putting more money into school holiday clubs and launching a programme called 10 by 10. It will guarantee 10 positive experiences for young people before they reach the age of 10.”
The Local Democracy Reporting Service contacted the Cabinet Office to ask if the government had any response to Mayor Cooke’s comments about the report, and to find out if Andy Burnham would be taking the town’s mayor up on the offer of a visit.
No response was received at the time of writing.