Over 800 children and babies have received a bed, cot or moses basket in a matter of months in a new project to tackle bed poverty in South Yorkshire.
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00:00We're hearing stories, or we were hearing stories, of eight-weeks-old sleeping in bouncy
00:06chairs, two-year-olds sleeping in baths, people sleeping on floors, children sleeping on sofas,
00:12children sleeping on mouldy mattresses, broken beds, so being able to just make sure that
00:17they've got that really basic need met is really, really important.
00:22The idea of this project is that it's about, one, the delivery of a tangible bed to a family
00:27in need, but it's also, in delivery of that bed, helping to build trusted relationships
00:32with statutory partners, so that be midwives, health visitors, social workers, and it's
00:37all about improvement in health equality, and we want to make sure that our children
00:41in South Yorkshire, those nought-to-five-year-olds, have the best start in life, and in the early
00:45years, in those first five years, your brain develops faster than at any other point in
00:49your life, and without sleep, that brain can't develop in the way that it needs to.
00:54I think some of our stats really, really shock people, so when we talk about the fact
00:58that one in ten babies born in Sheffield in 2023 received a Moses basket from Baby Basics
01:03Sheffield, that's a huge number, and that's a shocking statistic, and in 2024, that shouldn't
01:09be happening.
01:10I think the other thing that can really shock people is that the families that we support
01:15are often working families that can't make ends meet.
01:18My hope and prayer at Baby Basics UK is this project that we're modelling here in South
01:22Yorkshire can actually be replicated in other areas of the country.
01:30So the Beds for the Babies project is a pioneering scheme that we've funded and developed through
01:36the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority right across South Yorkshire to make sure
01:39that every single child under five in South Yorkshire has a guaranteed safe place to sleep,
01:43so be that a bed, Moses basket, or a cot, we deliver those through Baby Basics and make
01:48sure everyone's got a safe place to sleep right across South Yorkshire.
01:51My job is to help people right across South Yorkshire, and working with brilliant charities
01:55like Baby Basics we get to help families right across the region.
01:57We've now delivered over a thousand beds right across the region, about 490 of those were
02:02Moses baskets, so for the very smallest babies when they go home from hospital, having that
02:06support, the safe place to sleep that they need, so I've been really proud to be able
02:09to do some of this work.