Early years provision

News also that Graham Allen MP is involved in a report on early years intervention makes me so angry.

The Labour Government had a great idea - Sure Start - and the only problem with it was that those that should be taking it up most weren’t doing so. As I was involved in both the management board of Bexhill Sure Start and also as a volunteer with them I kept telling the Labour Ministers that the only problem with the brilliant scheme is that it ‘encourages’ parents (often young, socially disadvantaged and vulnerable, all the usual precursors to the behaviour the report outlines ) to attend if they want. Whereas better educated families with parents able and wanting to access such services swarmed to the centres and events.

What needs to be done - and I’m unashamedly un-PC here - is to target those families and link access to other services and benefits to a compulsion to attend the excellent facilities and interventions available at what are now called Children’s Centres (what were previously Sure Start till the money ran out and now mostly unfortunately run by Social Services).

We can bang on about this as long as we want - and this report just rehashes Frank Field’s ideas, but until someone gets to grip with an element of compulsion and specialists like speech and physio, health and education are able to see these children sooner rather than later without ‘treading on toes’ these problems will continue indefinitely.

And to let private providers come in and run such services, well of course I’d expect that from the Tories - but I am disappointed to see a Labour MP support it - who pays would then gain for their children and would again not target those in most need.

In our area like so many others we can again see a whole generation who ignored what was available on their doorstep provided by Sure Start turning again into the dependent and often dysfunctional families who miss out on so much precisely because of lack of intervention.

Please, it’s not rocket science - get a woman doing the next report perhaps?

Philipa Coughlan

Gordon Place

Bexhill