Heartbreaking interview with L6 Community Association Chief Exec, Gerard Woodhouse
“The bigger picture is that I’m 58 and never in my life have I seen it so bad,” said Gerard Woodhouse, Labour and Co-operative Party Councillor and Chief Executive of the L6 Community Association. He spoke emotionally on the impact this has had on the wards of Merseyside as well as his own association.
The L6 Community Association was founded 21 years ago but has massively expanded in recent years. They provide a food bank, food union, a children’s uniform store, a baby bank for expectant mothers, a youth club and outreach programmes such as a pensioners’ clubs and shopping buses.
Despite being based in Everton, only five of every 100 people helped by the Association are from the L6 area, with aid being given in many areas of Merseyside, including Walton, Childwall and Fazakerley.
“We’ve now become a centre where people from the whole of Merseyside come and we support something like 1000–1400 people per week and that’s without school holidays or Christmas. That’s just on a normal week,” said Woodhouse.
Any other year at Christmas, the L6 centre would be supporting 10,000 children at Christmas. They would be hosting Christmas parties, pantomimes and bingo. Typically they would raise £80,000, which would be spent on toys for the children, but this year the number of children needing support could double, which paints a grim picture as the charity is “losing a hell of a lot of money”, according to Woodhouse.
“I go in houses. I see the way people are living and it’s not a joke. People just have not got the money to live. People are still being sanctioned. People are still waiting eight to ten weeks for money,” he said.
During the first lockdown, the L6 centre was able to secure £30,000 worth of funding, distributing 13,000 parcels to over 3,000 people over the 13 weeks. Second time round, the organisation is finding support a lot harder.
“The second lockdown has been a lot harder because people were not expecting it. A lot of our people work in the matchday, so they’re not paid weekly,” said Gerard. “It has been worse this year in terms of austerity as the council has lost a lot of funding. They haven’t got any money.”
The third sector organisation has applied to the council twice for funding but, did not meet the criteria. Woodhouse stressed the ways in which they are trying to support their communities, through campaigning for funding to one-to-one support.
“We’re still getting daily issues of people’s benefits being stopped or they have to wait six weeks for them.” explained Woodhouse, “We’re having to feed them each week, supporting them and getting them help with electricity and gas, speaking to the mortgage people. It’s just non-stop.”
Metro Mayor of Liverpool, Steve Rotherham, described the city’s public finances as being at ‘breaking point’. With the 2010s bringing Merseyside some of the harshest cuts to council funding, it’s not clear how devastating the long-term compounding impact of pandemic could have on the constituents of the city region.
“There’s no day that I don’t see a person in front of me crying. Or a day where I don’t watch a little kid with a face on them. They haven’t got shoes on them or they haven’t got the money to get their dinner at school. It’s just unbelievable. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life.”
Heartbreaking anecdotes such as this from Woodhouse are all too common, as child poverty and inequality rise, find out how you can help the centre by calling them on 0151–260 1297 or emailing L6centre@aol.com.
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