averilburystedmunds: Blackpool Better Start

Blackpool location

In reading about health inequality in Britain, I was dismayed to realise from the research, of the enduring historical patchwork of prosperity and deprivation in the country. It is not that I didn’t know that Mayfair, for instance, was privileged, and large areas of prosperous major cities like Liverpool, Manchester, Cambridge, and in London’s boroughs, also had areas of eye-wateringly awful poverty. Until now the sheer depth and volume of enduring poverty in certain areas had escaped my attention and I am now shocked to read the details. And what always particularly shocks is the proximity of deprivation to affluence.

Etching of Blackpool in 1848

To take one example: Blackpool in Lancashire, a town where my second husband was born, though he he always felt it necessary to add the extra detail,” In St Anne’s, at the better end.” Located on the North-West coast of England, Blackpool is a large seaside resort on the edge of the Irish Sea and in the past, has often been voted the favourite seaside town in the U.K. In my girlhood, Blackpool was the natural, popular destination for day trips, or even weekends away, particularly for factory workers from industrial Lancashire and Yorkshire, at a time, in th

St Anne's Pier

e 1940s and early 1950s, when annual holidays away for the working classes were relatively rare. The growth of the town, from an eighteenth century small coastal hamlet, to a fashionable sea-bathing centre after the Victorians discovered the health benefits of sea water, was facilitated by the early arrival of the railway in the 1840s, bringing the first influx of day trippers from surrounding counties. Today, Blackpool can boast of being the only British resort to have the three piers which underpin the famous Golden Mile and the hugely popular annual attraction of the Blackpool Illuminations. Added to these delights are the Winter Gardens, the Pleasure Beach, and Blackpool Tower still valued by many, in these decades of holidays abroad when most Brits only have to choose between the delights of South of France, Italy, Spain, etc.

Blackpool Central Station, 1960s
Suggests prosperity.

But Blackpool’s fortunes have declined since its days of prosperity and popularity. Frankly, it is not alone but seems typical of the decay in certain parts of the North of England. In 2021 Sajid Javid, then Health Secretary, made a speech in Blackpool in which he described the huge differences in health access and outcomes related to ethnicity and socio-economic status, as ‘the disease of disparity’. And last week Wes Streeting chose Blackpool as the location for his first speech on health inequalities, pledging more NHS funding for poor areas, like Blackpool, which have fewer GPs and longer waiting times for medical help. Blackpool Better Start is a national, lottery-funded initiative bringing together the NHS, NSPCC, othe local council, police and a six strong team of local trusted parents known as Community

Blackpool's Community Connectors

Connectors, put together to win the confidence of locals. The Community Connectors are seen as crucial in gaining the trust of families in the most deprived areas who quickly feel judged and who also fear the power of Social Services. These Community Connectors enrol new parents attending anti-natal clinics and offer advice on alcohol and smoking during pregnancy. Birth registrations have been moved to three former Sure Start centres, now family hubs, to include every newborn name and family in the area. Every expectant parent in Blackpool is offered free perinatal classes, normally costing around £296 per course in other parts of the country. There are other courses

£45,000,000 lottery funding awarded to
Blackpool Better Start

aimed at developing the emotional bond between parents and their babies, an important dimension in Blackpool which has the country’s highest proportion of children in care, at nearly three times the national average. Since 2019, Blackpool Better Start has seen a 19% increase in breastfeeding, a 6% fall in the numbers of babies born pre-term and an 11% drop in the number of five-year-olds with tooth decay, an issue affecting one in three children of that age in Blackpool, compared with one in four nationally.

Thousands of families in Blackpool now have the worst living standards on record and unhealthy, even dangerous, solutions to coping with poverty, are tried, such as re-heating old bottles of baby formula and turning off fridges overnight ‘to save money’. Across England, 40% of 11-year-olds are overweight but within that statistic, children in poorer areas are more than twice as likely to be obese at 5 and 11 than their wealthier counterparts. These statistics are depressing and speak of ignorance and a sad lack of awareness of the fundamentals of a healthy life with, perhaps, an absence of feelings of personal power. However, there is evidence of much positive work involving both families and organisations happening in Blackpool and it must be assumed, elsewhere, to cope positively with inequality. One contribution might well lie within secondary state education with courses on health and social education compulsory for all levels of ability and with the teaching staff appropriately trained in all the nuances of deprivation and inequality.