Children 'being failed by Coalition cuts': Doctors warn of widening social inequalities

Ministers have also broken vows to tackle obesity and binge drinking, the British Medical Association said.

 
Cuts to Sure Start children’s centres and changes to the benefits system could harm the most vulnerable children while ministers have not lived up to pledges to tackle problems like binge drinking and obesity, it added. 

The BMA called for parenting classes aimed at children in households with unhealthy lifestyles, tackling drinking and poor nutrition during pregnancy and a ban on advertising of certain foods to children.

She said: “The austerity measures, the changes in benefits will particularly impact on some families which are only marginally coping. Poverty is a major factor in relation to children’s health and welfare.”

Prof Sir Albert Aynsley-Green, the first children’s commissioner for England who wrote the forward for a BMA child health report published yesterday, said: “Britain is failing its children on a grand scale.

The report said more children than ever were put into care last year, mainly due to abuse and neglect, and a greater number are still dying in Britain than other western European nations despite some improvement in death rates. 

Failings in healthcare mean that just 3% of children with asthma have a full, written plan for managing their condition and only 5% with diabetes are getting a level of care which meets “best practice” guidelines, it said.