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Fathers have their day - and their say

Tuesday June 3, 2003

The Guardian

Tucked away in the concrete setting of a former rent office on two lower floors of a soaring council block in Kennington, south London, is Hurley pre-school, a voluntary community group which caters predominantly for the toddlers who live in what is officially classed as a deprived neighbourhood.

Around a third of the youngsters currently attending the nursery are from refugee families, while its intake also reflects the fact that this area has the largest Colombian population anywhere in the world outside Colombia. The majority of parents are on benefits, and many of those who are in poorly-paid jobs are battling to get their entitlement through the troubled working families tax credit scheme.

The nursery - open virtually all year round to help working parents - also welcomes parent volunteers, providing a much-needed sanctuary for single parents and others whose personal lives are steeped in poverty and personal trauma. Clearly, it provides more than just childcare.

Just blocks away from the grim council housing are the leafy squares of smart Georgian houses popular with MPs because of their proximity to Westminster. Hurley has become a very popular, over-subscribed setting which is greatly in demand from middle-class families, too, because of a lack of similar facilities in the area. The nursery has a maximum capacity of 36 children per session and currently has a waiting list of 14 children over the age of two and a half and 14 over the age of three.

The pre-school is clearly successful, well-run and popular, yet is struggling to survive in the face of a tangle of complex national and local funding and bureaucracy.

Today, as the youngsters squeal excitedly at the antics of the Paper Dragon theatre company (one of a number of similar projects funded by the Regional London Lottery to the tune of £18,000 a year), pre-school leader, Rosemary Phillips, is trying to balance her books.

The group receives funding through nursery vouchers for three- and four-year-olds, a small education grant from Lambeth council and some help through the relatively new local Sure Start scheme. But last year the voucher cash came to £48,000, compared to the annual running costs of £160,000. The difference has to be made up from fundraising - which is done on an impressive scale, given the regularity of demands for more cash and the challenges of raising it from the poor area the nursery serves.

For example, Jennifer Hayes, the group's main fundraiser, has just raised £27,000 for a new playground - much-needed, given that many of the youngsters have no outdoor play space at home. Water coolers and free fruit are funded by Sure Start, while IBM computers, through its Kid Smart scheme, commit the group to an ongoing research programme into the link between the early use of computers and educational attainment.

Upstairs, the ball pond was provided and fitted free of charge by a local dad, and even the pet rabbit, Mr Fuzzy, was donated by the US navy after September 11. He has become a celebrity in his own right and apparently his photograph hangs in pride of place in the American embassy.

But financial considerations are a constant worry. Phillips admits that this month she might have to use some of the £27,000 set aside for the playground to meet staff costs (there are eight permanent members of staff and assorted helpers and volunteers). So many parents have been unable to afford their fees because of problems accessing their entitlement under the working families tax credit, that she has let them run into arrears.

She has also recently had her application for extra Sure Start funding (to maximise space by installing an extra floor) turned down, despite the ongoing pressure on her to provide more places. Sure Start recently withdrew its earlier offer to fund the group's two-and-a-half-year-olds. And on top of that, she is trying to negotiate an extension of the current lease - for which Lambeth Housing is demanding £30,000 - without which the nursery will be unable to stay in its current premises. "If we don't resolve that we'll either have to squat or fold," she says.

So this week, as the government launches a drive to highlight the achievements to date of its flagship Sure Start policy, Phillips will be lobbying local MPs to help her extend her lease. She is no stranger to SW1, having bashed Tony Blair's ear about funding at a Downing Street reception. But she remains deeply concerned about the red tape and financial constraints which stand in her way. Sure Start, for example, is concentrated on the wards which are, according to the official government index, ranked as the 20% most deprived. In fact, the ward which houses Hurley ranks 41.22 out of 100 on the national index of deprivation, which is nowhere near the 20% benchmark, but still has pockets of deep deprivation.

What Phillips would like more than anything else is core funding - from either local or national government - to pay her running costs, so that the group is no longer funtioning on a "hand to mouth" basis.

There are too many anomalies in the system, she points out, which affect users as well as providers: "Why have a universal voucher system for three- and four-year-olds, when there are clearly many better-off families who simply don't need that money?" she asks. "We have parents here who are on the bread line, and can't even get the voucher money because their child was born before the payment date. That is so unfair. The working families tax credit system may have been a good idea, but the parents here are going through hell trying to get what they are entitled to. It is unnecessary and degrading. The whole thing has been a fiasco and the parents have had the rug pulled from under their feet."

As well as being a flagship government scheme, Sure Start is clearly a priority for education secretary Charles Clarke. When newly appointed last October, he singled out Sure Start (which is alive and kicking in his Norwich constituency) as a scheme ripe for further expansion.

This month, the government's early years strategy will be under the spotlight with the launch of the first ever national Sure Start month. Designed to be a celebration of the scheme so far around the country, it kicked off yesterday with a teddy bears' picnic in London's Regents Park, attended by early years minister Baroness (Cathy) Ashton.

A series of further themed events will help to highlight various childcare choices and the challenges they face. On Thursday, Clarke will address the annual conference of the Pre-School Learning Alliance, the umbrella group representing nearly 16,000 pre-school groups, of which Hurley is a member.

And as part of National Sure Start month, Pre-school Playweek 2003 will take place next week with activities across the country, including the opening of the Pre-School Learning Alliance's first Neighbourhood Nursery in Lewisham, south-east London, which will be attended by Baroness Ashton.

This week is also designated national day nurseries week, highlighting the fact that nurseries are now the fastest growing small business sector in the UK, caring for an estimated 500,000 under-fives.

And in the run-up to Father's Day on June 15, the Daycare Trust will highlight the role of men in childcare (see panel below).

Margaret Lochrie, chief executive of the Pre-School Learning Alliance, believes the government deserves credit for its achievements to date, but also has clear ideas about the next steps forward: "I think Estelle Morris was very focused on school improvement and I welcome Charles's broader vision," she says.

What is not in dispute is that tremendous progress has been made by the government, she points out.

Labour was the first government to introduce a National Childcare Strategy in England - there was no strategy at all before 1997. Since then, it has created new childcare places benefiting 1.1 million children, guaranteed free nursery education for all four-year-olds, and an increasing number of three-year-olds, and set up more than 400 local Sure Start programmes to support families.

The theme of Lochrie's organisation's annual conference this week will be the next phase of the charity's two-year campaign "changing lives changing life", which has at its core a Charter for Parents and the Early Years. This aims to address the current shortage of childcare places in all parts of the country. Its next phase will include an inquiry into children who miss out on childcare because they live in pockets of deprivation.

Which brings us back to Kennington. "A third of under-fours are living in poverty. We would like to see some sort of entitlement to ensure that all children in that category get an automatic right to childcare," Lochrie says.

And her key message to the education secretary is the importance of getting parents involved in childcare. The Netherlands recently brought in legislation to give parents a role in the shaping of policy, she points out. Now there's a thought.

A series of famous fathers will give their views on men as childcarers and their own experience as "active dads" as the special focus of the Daycare Trust's national childcare week next week (June 9-15).

In the run-up to Father's Day on June 15, the trust will explore men's roles both working in childcare and as active fathers getting involved in making decisions about their own childcare. It will also publish the results of a MORI survey into public attitudes towards men as childcare workers.

"Famous" dads will include many well-known faces from our TV screens as well as others less in the public eye. Among them are chief inspector of schools and head of the Office for Standards in Education, David Bell; newscaster Jeremy Bowen; public relations consultant Max Clifford; union chief Bob Crow (general secretary of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers Union); TV chefs Ainsley Harriot and Antony Worrall Thompson and Changing Rooms interior designer Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen.

Stephen Burke, director of the Daycare Trust, said: "Childcare is the second most female-dominated occupation in this country. The gov ernment has set a target of increasing the percentage of men in the workforce from 2% to 6% by 2004. Despite a vigorous recruitment campaign, it seems unlikely that this target will be met. But why more men are needed in childcare goes far beyond targets to fundamental questions about gender in our society, tackling stereotypes and promoting positive male role models. During National Childcare Week we will be looking at why we need more men in childcare, what is stopping men from caring for children as a job and how men could be encouraged to work in childcare."

· Further information on regional activities to celebrate national Sure Start month, see: www.nationalsurestartmonth.com www.nationalsurestartmonth www.pre-school.org.uk www.daycaretrust.org.uk

EducationGuardian.co.uk © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

(posted 7605 days ago)

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