Why living in the parks is bad

The Parks tops a health deprivation index that also names central Swindon, Penhill and Pinehust, plus Walcot and Gorse Hill among the 10 least healthy areas of the county.

And although the more affluent parts of Swindon are among the least deprived in Britain, the Parks is in the UK's bottom 10 per cent when it comes to health and life expectancy.

The index is based on statistics like the number of people who die aged less than 65, the number who receive disability benefits, and the number of babies born with a low birth weight in a particular area.

And both councillors and health experts say the factors that have put The Parks to the top of the sick list are all too obvious.

Swindon Primary Care Group's public health consultant, Dr. Hendrik Chapel, said: "If you have poor working conditions, you can become stressed and if you are stressed, you are more likely to smoke or drink.

"Those things working together can mean you are more likely to have heart attacks, and so need disability pay. Also, people who work anti-social hours often come home late and lack the time to participate in sport. There might not be sports facilities near them, or they can't afford it."

Parks councillor Barry Thompson said he was not surprised to hear the Parks was the sick man of Swindon.

"It's not a particularly healthy place to live in the sense that it suffers from deprivation and a fairly high degree of poverty," he said.

"In the main, it's poverty that's the problem. People on low incomes feel that they can't afford to buy fresh food and eat a lot of junk.

"There's a high percentage of teenage mothers who have never had the experience of cooking.

"They think meat is born in plastic bags and buying fresh food is not in their experience."

The health index, which is published in a Swindon Council report on health inequalities in the town, comes just two months after children's charity Barnardo's claimed 10,000 children in Swindon were living in poverty.

A number of health education initiatives are already in place in Swindon's deprived areas to try and improve matters, including a stop smoking campaign, a drive to cut down on teenage pregnancies, and drug and alcohol initiatives.

But often, people either do not know about the schemes or shy away from them, as the low take-up of a scheme to prescribe nicotine patches in deprived areas shows.

"In areas like Parks, people don't take it up," Dr Chapel says.

"They are perhaps not aware of it or how important smoking is to their health, because it's the only thing they have to make them feel a bit better."

Although Mr Thompson thinks poverty has more of an impact on people's health in Parks than their environment, Dr. Chapel argues people's surroundings can also contribute to making them ill.

He says people who do not feel their areas are safe, or who dislike their untidy surroundings, might not go out for exercise, or mix with their neighbours and build a sense of community.

In Penhill, which the index names as the sixth least healthy part of Wiltshire, and the most deprived overall, some £2.5 million is being ploughed into initiatives like a new nursery and drop-in facility for parents.

The aim of the facilities is to promote community feeling, give inexperienced mums some support and advice, and give their children a better start in life.

Something similar is already going on in Parks, where the Welcome Centre offers families basic skills training and a safe place for children to play.

It also runs a savings scheme for an annual family holiday, is teaching parents to cook cheap and healthy food, and is even planning to set up DIY lessons with the help of a £2,700 Millennium Award from the National Lottery.

"We do our best we try to support the families as best we can," says Kay White, an outreach worker at the centre, which is funded by Swindon Council and Zurich Financial Services.

"We are just trying to give them the tools to cope with everyday life."