About us
As an Anglican Church,
St Barnabas is determined to serves it local
community. We want to create a genuine, lasting sense of cohesion and mutual
trust. We wish to help all local people including children, adults, and the
elderly. That’s why we started our community project in a small way in 2011 to
enhance wellbeing and wholeness, to promote better chances in life, and build a
stronger community. We completely rethought the project during the pandemic, in
responses to the dreadful levels of need, locally. We rebranded is Barnabas
Thrive! at that same time. It now offers help to everyone approaching us for
help, and its component activities change regularly according needs and
funding.
The
Barnabas parish covers three geographical areas in Oldham: Clarksfield,
Greenacres, and Littlemoor. Some clients come from west and central Oldham. The
northern half of Clarksfield is one of Oldham’s more deprived areas.
We
estimate the weekly footfall through our Church and Community Project as
450–600 people during term-time and as many as 1,000 during school holidays.
Statistics
The
Parish of Clarksfield is multi-racial, with a composition that is changing at a
bewildering speed. Many recent statistics appear below. The accuracy of some is
unlikely to be high but, nevertheless, they well illustrate our daily
challenges and our social context.
We obtain our statistics
from three sources:
1. Data
collected and analysed by members of the Church Council.
2. The
Church Urban Fund.
3. Oldham
Council via its monthly e-compendium.
Our project aims to
improve the life chances of all in this part of Oldham. As a Local Authority, Oldham’s overall ranking
worsened from 34th to 19th of 317 Local Authorities during the period,
2015–2019.
The
so-called indices of multiple deprivation (IMD) describe relative affluence or
deprivation. These IMD bring together 7 statistical domains: employment;
income; health and disability; education; crime; housing and services; and
living environment. The resulting IMD are a relative measure that is used to
compare geographical areas; they are not a direct measure of deprivation. Other
measures, such as child poverty or working-age poverty, are necessary to
develop a fuller understanding of an area.
The most recent indices of multiple
deprivation were published on 1 November 2019. The Church Urban Fund has used the standard indices of multiple deprivation to rank
parishes in order of the deprivation they demonstrate. They suggest
our Parish is in the most deprived 1.7% of all Anglican parishes in England.
Stated otherwise, we rank 251 out of 12,382. This result demonstrates a slight
worsening since the previous statistics (published in 2015) which suggest we
were then in the most deprived 2.1%.
It is surely unwise to summarise the
disparity in life experience across an entire parish by using a single datum
for deprivation. It also complicates our task of tackling and addressing need
and makes it more difficult when seeking external sources of funding such as
grants.
Data
concerning local super-output areas (LSOA) are better at describing conditions.
On a
micro-community level, the Barnabas Centre is located within LSOA, E01005448.
The latest indices of multiple deprivation (IMD-15) indicate it is (overall) in
the most deprived 1.1% of all LSOAs in England. It is also in the 1.3% most
deprived in terms of crime; 1.5% in terms of income deprivation; 1.9% in terms
of health and disability; 6.3% in terms of child deprivation; 6.8% in terms of
adult skills and training. And the lower super-output area (LSOA)
near the Church is in the most deprived 0.3%.
The
LSOA indices suggest that the high-rise flats located in the crook between
Huddersfield Road and Ripponden Road lie in the 0.4% most-deprived local
super-output areas in England. Most of this deprivation is localised in the
south and western parts of the Parish, in both Littlemoor and Greenacres.
In
2016, the Office for National Statistic (ONS: 18-03-2016) looked at factors
such as income, employment, health, education skills and training and crime. It
also looked at disability, access to housing and the built environment in
cities and towns in England and Wales. Data from the study shows that Oldham
‘town’ had over 60% of their local areas (also known as Lower Super Output
Areas or LSOAs) ranked in the most deprived 20% of areas in England.
By 2016, Oldham was the most deprived borough in
England;[1] the 2021 Census showed 77.7% of Oldham households live with some form of
deprivation (51.7% is the average for England).[2]
Covid
affected children. In 2014–2020, Oldham had the highest relative child poverty
rate in England. In 2024, it had reached to 44%; it has England’s third-highest
absolute rate of child poverty.[3] Many are
ineligible for free school meals.[4]
Covid has aggravated everything: the Institute
of Fiscal Studies suggests those worst
affected by Covid were women, younger workers, and low-paid workers. Before the
pandemic, these groups were over-represented in the east Oldham economy.[5] By 2022,
the unemployment rate across all age groups in the ‘Oldham East and Saddleworth’
constituency had risen by 43% since the first lockdown; elsewhere it had
fallen.[6] And Oldham
was in lockdown for longer than almost anywhere else in the UK, meaning the
need was larger, longer-lasting and, because Oldham comprises many small
villages, experienced locally.
Barnabas Thrive!
Barnabas Thrive! is one of the largest community project in the VCF sector of east Oldham. It is still the
most deprived borough in Greater Manchester It covers the following projects:
·
Holiday provision — Holiday Thrive!
·
Empowering local
women — Women Thrive!
·
Offering help and a safe haven to teenagers with mental-health problems — Teen Thrive!
·
Supplying affordable, nutritious food — Food
Thrive!
We are currently exploring new
ways of helping local people.
We are unique in east Oldham:
·
We own the largest
community centre in east Oldham.
·
We run the largest food
co-operative (operating as a food pantry) in east Oldham.
·
We refuse to discriminate in terms of age,
gender, nationality and ethnicity, creed, sexuality, traveller (including
Roma), etc.
·
We allow local groups
to rent the Barnabas Centre for parties, life events, celebrations, etc.
Barnabas Thrive! cannot be
held responsible for content published on external websites.
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last updated 19 April 2024