Too many babies don’t have a safe place to sleep. This baby bank is trying to change that

Food banks have become normalised. Baby banks are becoming increasingly common too. In South Yorkshire, Beds for Babies was set up to provide beds and bedding for children born in poverty. CEO Cat Ross explains the need she comes across day-to-day.

An average day for Beds for Babies begins with referrals coming in from the four local authorities that we’re working with in South Yorkshire for families with children up to the age of five who need Moses baskets, cots or beds, plus bedding and mattresses. We also sometimes get specialist referrals for things like bunk beds where families have two young children but haven’t got space for two toddler beds. We then pack those up into our van for delivery to our partner baby banks in each local authority, and then from there, the referrer picks it up and delivers it to the family. 

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Referrals come from professionals working with families: a midwife, health visitor, social worker, local authority, family hub or another charity, like a food bank – anybody who is working with a family and has realised that their children don’t have a safe space to sleep. We’ve heard all kinds of stories: an eight week-old sleeping in a bouncy chair; a two-year-old sleeping in the bath; a one-year-old sleeping on the sofa; toddlers sleeping on mattresses on the floor in very cold houses. 

Baby Basics, who deliver Beds for Babies, started in Sheffield in South Yorkshire 15 years ago, and the premise of our charity was all about providing a safe space of sleep for a newborn. The provision of a Moses basket can mean that a baby can go home, and in some cases if there isn’t a Moses basket provided a baby could be taken into care simply because their parents are living in poverty. 

We are involved in one of the bold ambitions from the Integrated Care Partnership (ICP) in South Yorkshire, which is all about reducing health inequalities in early years. According to recent local council research, females born in Rotherham have a healthy life expectancy of 56.5 years, significantly lower than the England average of 63.9, while males born in the Yorkshire town have a healthy life expectancy of 58.7 years, compared to the England average of 63.1. The ICP and the mayoral combined authority are determined that should all change. 

We launched Beds for Babies in March 2024. That’s when the mayoral combined authority committed £2.2m to this project overall. The first beds were delivered in June, and between June and November, we’ve delivered almost 1,000 beds for children across South Yorkshire. 

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There’s quite a lot of research about the importance of sleep for development. As we know, the first five years of life is when our brain develops more than any other time, and sleep is absolutely crucial to that. Having a safe space to sleep is about more than that tangible physical bed – it’s about the environment that they’re in as well – but this is the starting point. One in 10 babies born in Sheffield in 2023 required a Moses basket from Baby Basics, so the need is huge.

Our work also helps to reduce stress and anxiety for parents who are worrying about how they’re going to provide for their children, and as we know, when a parent is stressed, that is picked up by children, so it can have a huge effect on wellbeing. 

A family can be referred more than once, so if they get a Moses basket from us when their baby is born, they can come back to us after four months to get a cot bed that will last their child right through to five years old.  

In each local authority area that’s part of this project, we are running a pilot. One of the pilot areas in Doncaster is looking at how we can provide beds for older children, because we know that for every bed for an under-five-year-old that we provide there are likely to be older children or even parents without a bed. 

That’s part of why the project is a collaboration across local authorities, the voluntary and community sector and the NHS. It’s not about finding new money within those organisations, it’s about how money can be spent differently and to ensure that families’ needs are met, and hopefully getting them involved with our family hubs, where they can also obtain support around debt relief, budgeting, employment or getting them into better housing, which, hopefully, will help to lift that family out of poverty in the long term so that they can provide for themselves. 

Baby Basics Sheffield is the biggest baby bank in South Yorkshire. Before we became the delivery partner for Beds for Babies, we were holding waiting lists of between 40 and 60 children waiting for a bed at any one time, and they could be on that waiting list for up to six to eight weeks, and that’s really demoralising for our staff and volunteers as well as families. Now, to take a referral over the phone and be able to say, “Yes, we can have that to you next week or in two weeks’ time,” that has just been amazing. 

There are a multitude of ways that people can help. If you have a Moses basket or cot that you don’t need, you can donate it to your local baby bank. We’re always looking for more volunteers who can help to safety-check second-hand items and who can help with all the other aspects of referrals into a baby bank, from packing up clothing to cleaning prams. 

At the moment, this project is only based in South Yorkshire, but I oversee Baby Basics UK and we have 58 centres around the UK, so my hope is that this model can be replicated to other areas of the country. 

Cat Ross is CEO of Baby Basics.

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