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A cafe is helping to fund frontline addiction help services. According to the Liverpool Echo, staff have said they've seen children as young as 12 seeking help for ketamine dependency and addiction. is helping to fund frontline addiction services in Birkenhead, where staff say they are seeing children as young as 12 seeking help for ketamine dependency.
Gather & Graze in West Kirby operates as a social enterprise alongside Flourish Wellbeing Hub in Wallasey, and also with Nightingales Hub and cafe on Argyle Street in Birkenhead.
Like Gather & Graze, Nightingales offers support for addiction, therapy, and wellbeing sessions, as well as healthcare services. They provide free hot meals twice a week, with no requirements. Recently, Nightingales partnered with Melt Arts CIC to provide free healthy meals for their summer music and dancing camp.
People can ask for help privately, without a lot of questions.
Director Nicki Heywood, 51, told the Echo that the organisation is seeing an alarming increase in young people needing support for ketamine addiction. She said: "It's just blown up. The physical effects happen so quickly. Within six to 12 months, irreversible damage happens."
"We call it a pocket money addiction because that's how cheap it is. You can get it for £6 or £7 a gram now. Kids are using their dinner money to buy it."
Nicki also recalled that many children are ill, "passing blood in their urine", and can't do therapy because they're ill.
The work to tackle the rise in addiction comes as new figures have revealed there is a huge scale of health inequalities facing areas of the Wirral.
According to data published last week by the Office for National Statistics, Birkenhead Central has one of the lowest healthy life expectancies anywhere in England and Wales. Boys born in the area between 2019 and 2023 can expect to live just 47.8 years in good health, compared to a national average of 65.3 years for men in England.
Nearby Tranmere also ranked among the 10 lowest areas in England and Wales for men's healthy life expectancy, at 49.7 years. For girls born in the area, they can expect 50.5 healthy years, compared to a national average of 66.8 across England. Tranmere is also one of the areas with one of the lowest expectations of healthy living years in England.
Nikci drew on her own experience to help form the organisation. She believes deprivation and the lack of opportunity have contributed to addiction becoming more prominent across generations.
Nicki called Birkenhead a "ghost town", pointing out that there has been an economic decline and job losses, which have led to drinking and a heroin epidemic, making the problem in the area "intergenerational". She added that often they have people from the same family in different generations with different addictions.
Fellow director Jai Roscoe, 39, said demand for support had continued to grow during his 18 months with the organisation. He said: "When I first started it was mainly middle-aged men, but the longer I've been here, the more it's started to change. I'm stood at the door on a Tuesday or Thursday night, and there's children in school uniforms coming over."
Roscoe said many children come to them because they believe they aren't going to be fed, so they turn to the cafe for help. He also pointed out that as the free meals aren't "means-tested", all kinds of people with financial issues come to the hub for help, including "men in suits".
The Echo reported that almost 80 percent of the staff at Nightingales are former service users or addicts. On helping those with addiction, Nicki said: "It's about giving people a safe place where they don't feel judged."
