Latch-key kids again!

Published: 9 December, 2010

• I WRITE to express dismay at Camden’s proposals to all but eradicate the play service with cuts amounting to nearly 80 per cent of the current budget by 2013/14 and to isolate vulnerable children and children with disabilities. 

In light of central government’s 26 per cent reduction in funding for local government, this is unjustifiable.

These proposals will have a devastating effect on children, parents and carers, who will have no childcare provision, forcing them to give up their jobs or see a new generation of latch-key kids with an increase in road and home accidents and increased crime and anti-social behaviour, to name just a few problems. 

Alongside the government’s welfare reform proposals, single or low-income parents will be caught between a rock and a hard place.

The proposal to commission a “smaller” number of voluntary sector organisations to this end contradicts everything inclusion stands for.

KIM MABBUTT
The Winchester Project
Swiss Cottage