A fifth of Rotherham's kids living in poverty, survey

MORE than one in five Rotherham children are living below the poverty line, according to a new report.

The national snapshot published as part of Save the Children’s End Child Poverty campaign says that 22 per cent of the borough’s young people are in child poverty.

It puts Rotherham in mid-table in a list of the best and worst-placed areas of Yorkshire, with Middlesbrough the worst in the region 38 per cent and the national average being 21 per cent.

Council officials said that the figure actually represented a slight improvement on the 2009 figure of 23.3 per cent for Rotherham, where agencies had been “working very hard” to limit the impact of the recession.

The worst area for child poverty nationally is Tower Hamlets with 52 per cent below the poverty line, while the figure for Sheffield, Doncaster and Barnsley was 23 per cent.

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