Demand prompts more funding for child beds scheme

An additional £300,000 of funding is being given to a South Yorkshire scheme which provides safe sleeping spaces for young children amid higher-than-expected demand.

The South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority (SYMCA) has approved plans to reprioritise funding within its existing 2025/26 budget to sustain the Beds for Babies programme.

Launched in June 2024, it aims to ensure every child aged five and under in the region has a safe, clean place to sleep.

Catt Ross, chief executive of the Baby Basics charity which delivers the scheme, said: "We're helping to change health inequalities we see in our region and bring better opportunities to our children - good sleep is vital to that."

The authority has already invested £2.2m in the initiative, which had been expected to sustain it until 2028.

However, this money is projected to be fully committed by August this year - 19 months earlier than planned.

Officials said the additional funding would act as a short-term measure to manage demand this year.

Ross said 4,000 children in the region had already been provided with beds through the work, which had seen "much higher demand than anticipated".

She said the charity was also spending more on supplies due to rising costs, which had been exacerbated by the Iran War.

Those same rising costs were pushing more families towards needing the charity's services, she added.

"We see families having to make decisions: do they buy their child a new mattress because it's urine soaked, put heating on in their house, or buy them new school shoes?"

She welcomed the end of the two-child benefit cap, which came into effect this week, meaning about 480,000 families with three or more children will get an average benefits rise of £4,100 a year.

However, Ross said she feared "the money that these families gain will be superseded by increasing costs due to global uncertainties".

She added: "Many of the families that we support are working families that can't make ends meet because of the cost of living.

"There might be an unforeseen situation like a bed being broken, being given a Section 21 "no-fault" eviction and put into temporary accommodation, being made redundant, or fleeing domestic abuse.

"We shouldn't have a situation where their children have to sleep in baths, bouncy chairs or drawers."

Listen to highlights from South Yorkshire on BBC Soundsor catch up with the latest episode of Look North.