A harrowing TV documentary claimed to show a child's perspective on life on Bradford's Delph Hill estate. Youngsters as small as six were seen fighting in the street, committing acts of vandalism and talking about heroin dealing at home in a show that aimed to lift the lid on child poverty in Britain. But did this really reflect the situation of 350 families on the estate? Sarah Walsh reports.

TWO EIGHT-year-old girls talk about punters buying drugs at the back door of their home. A foul-mouthed boy of six viciously kicks out at older children and boasts he can hotwire a JCB. Boarded-up houses are rotting slowly next to a mouldering heap of junked cars.

These are the images from the hard-hitting BBC documentary, Eyes of a Child, partly shot in Bradford's Delph Hill estate.

But go there, and it bears little resemblance to the gloomy TV images. Newly-built or revamped homes, a spanking new community centre, children playing out happily on their bikes in the quiet residential streets, bright floral hanging baskets and someone fixing their car, are the sights that greet you.

So it is with understandable frustration residents of Delph Hill view the BBC expose of their estate.

Single father Dale Frayne was born on the estate and now brings up two children on £110 per week benefits.

"I'm worried this has given Bradford a bad name," he says. "All I can say is that the families shown in the programme must want to live like that, you don't have to, even if you are on the social.

"It's nothing to do with money. My children can be little tearaways but when I shout at them they do what they're told. Some parents just can't be bothered. We get through the best we can and that means I can't buy a £2,000 car, I have got to settle for a van that cost me £60, I don't moan about it, it's just life."

The massive Royds regeneration scheme, which is run by local people sitting on a management board, has seen millions of pounds flow into the neighbourhood over the past three years.

Physical changes like new homes, new double glazing, and the community centre are obvious but beyond bricks and mortar there are also a host of community initiatives that did not exist three years ago such as volunteers giving children extra reading lessons at school; others take tots swimming once a week.

Unemployment is higher on Delph Hill than the Bradford average and there are many families living on benefits.

Mike Stocks, 58, and his wife Eileen support two grandchildren on state benefits of under £100 per week.

"The children are both in school and lack for no basics, although they don't have luxuries. What was shown in the programme was not poverty, but bad parenting," he said.

That view was endorsed by an angry Bradford South MP Gerry Sutcliffe, who complained: "The problem with these two families in the programme is not a shortage of money but their lifestyle."

And Tony Dylak, general manager of the Royds Partnership, added: "The programme wasn't about financial poverty, I felt, but poverty of a different kind, if you do not encourage your child to attend school, they are impoverished."

"The most important thing of everything we have done is the Better Reading Scheme in schools," Mr Dylak explained. "Volunteers have been going into schools to give one-to-one tuition and it has improved children's reading age by as much as 18 months in a term. Education gives young people a choice.''

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