Shared Health Foundation is a not-for-profit whose aim is to reduce the impact of poverty on health. We are clinically led, evidence based and work both on the ground with families and at a system change level.
Over 165,000 children are currently homeless living in Temporary Accommodation. Homelessness has a huge detrimental impact on children's health, education and life chances. Shared Health is working with local, regional and national government to ensure Temporary Accommodation a more safer, secure and peaceful experience.
As co-secretariat to the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Households in Temporary Accommodation, Shared Health champions the lived experience of children trapped in poor TA.
Due to a lack of regulation, data, safeguarding and strategic planning around the impact to their health and education we see time and time again what Temporary Accommodation can do to a child's life chances. Come and speak to us to find out how you can support the homeless children in your area.
Children Living in Temporary Accommodation Report: An Absolute Scandal (3.24 MiB)
This latest report from Shared Health Foundation exposes the profound and often overlooked impact of temporary accommodation on children's rights, health and education. Through exploring the experiences of families across the country, it uncovers thirteen violations of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child for children in temporary accommodation. The report calls on local and national governments to implement urgent reforms to mitigate the impacts of temporary accommodation on children.
Temporary accommodation has contributed to the deaths of at least 74 children in England in the last five years, official data shows.
Figures from the NHS-funded National Child Mortality Database reveal that 58 of those children were babies under the age of one.
Dame Siobhain McDonagh, MP and chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Households in Temporary Accommodation, said the figures were "shocking".
They represented "more than one [death] every month… in the fifth largest economy in the world", she added.
Housing Secretary and Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner said the government would fix the system by allocating £1bn to councils to provide "safe, secure and stable housing".
The report found that child deaths were more likely to occur when homelessness was combined with overcrowding, mould and a lack of access to safer sleep options, such as cots and Moses baskets.
Last year, government guidance was changed, recommending local authorities to help homeless families to access cots for children under the age of two.
However, Dame Siobhain said the guidance "needs to be made law to ensure that deaths in temporary accommodation are zero".
A record 123,000 families are living in temporary housing in England.
Temporary accommodation covers anything that isn't a permanent home and is organised by the local authority. It can include hotels, hostels, caravans, holiday parks, or flats and houses. Families often face multiple moves while homeless.
Dr Laura Neilson, chief executive of Shared Health, an organisation that works with homeless families, has been instrumental in uncovering the statistics on child deaths.
She says the "deeply upsetting" findings are unsurprising and that the situation is "preventable and fixable".
Homeless children are at risk because of "lots of vulnerabilities" coming together, she adds.
"We know that if you repeatedly move a child or baby, place them in accommodation without a cot or cooking facilities, and disconnect a family from support, the chance of death is increased.
"The result is the deaths of 74 children that, outside of temporary accommodation, would still be alive."
The exact cause of the deaths of each child has not been published, but the data has been obtained from the reviews of every child death in England where a panel of experts - made up of doctors, pathologists and social workers - have named temporary accommodation as a contributing factor.
Dr Neilson believes the impact on the health of homeless children is bigger than the data suggests and that the current data is likely an "underestimate".