Monday 31 October 2011

How I Saved Our Local Nursery


This is a guest post on UK Uncut by Lucy Reese, mother of Angus (6), Stanley (2) and Max (6 months)
A few years ago, like all good New Labour voters, I was obviously all for public services, but other than the bins and the NHS had very little need for them. Then I had kids. And everything changed. I’d always worked and was determined to do so after I had kids. My job as a TV producer paid quite well, but even so forking out nearly £400 a week in childcare – for a fairly bog standard private nursery – was pretty eye-watering. It was much more than my mortgage. By the time my lovely son was two and a half I knew I couldn’t carry on working the hours I did without going completely bat-shit mental. A ghastly programme about The Spice Girls was the tipping point. I had no work life balance and had to change the way I worked.

Fortunately, by this time my son had moved to a brilliant council run nursery called Caversham Children’s Centre, in Kentish Town, North London. I loved everything about it and it was affordable – the fees were about half what we’d been paying before. It gave me the breathing space to work out how I could change direction. I found I could do some TV stuff from home and also began to pick up work in F.E colleges, which I loved. I had another baby, started a PGCE and got more hours in the college. Throughout all these changes the nursery was a constant – our second boy went there too.

Since both my husband and I are self employed – he makes websites – we can’t afford to turn down work just because it doesn’t fit in with school holidays. I got work teaching summer schools so we started using the brilliant holiday play schemes run out of Camden Square Playcentre. It may sound cheesy, but these services are like extended family for millions of people like us. We can’t plead abject poverty, but to keep working, we need good quality affordable childcare. We want to spend some time with our kids and provide them with emotional security – we just couldn’t do this and pay private sector childcare fees.

Fast forward to the 2010 election. THEY got in and I remember saying to my husband that I reckoned the nursery and the playcentre would be for the chop. People like Cameron have never needed public services and think only lazy scroungers use them. By the end of 2010, it was announced that the playcentre would close in 2012 – then we found out in January of this year that the nursery would be closing in August.

When I got the letter about the nursery closing I burst into tears. Pregnant and hormonal, I just couldn’t handle the news. But I refused to go down without a fight. Fortunately all the other parents felt the same and to cut a long story short we worked together and although the nursery did close in August, it has recently reopened as the Caversham Community Nursery after we convinced the council to transfer management to a local community association.

The campaign was draining and involved dozens of meetings, hassling local councillors, standing in the street outside the Co-op and making a series of deputations to Camden Council. I gave birth in the middle of the campaign – baby Max has been to more council meetings than you could care to mention, both in and out of the womb.

So why did the campaign work? First off, we decided to work with our local Labour councillors, rather than harangue them for closing the nursery. We also pooled our skills. One of our group was a management consultant and produced an amazing business plan. Another mother is a PA and a brilliant organizer – with access to free printing facilities for leaflets! I used my contacts in local politics and media and gave the campaign focus with a Facebook group. The group’s leader, another TV producer, created amazingly convincing documents and sat up till the early hours refining our deputations to the council. It was bloody hard work but it paid off and though the process was at times frustrating, it was also incredibly empowering and shows what can be done if you work collectively. It made me understand the importance of local government and the experience has made me keen to stand as a local councillor – something that previously would have had about as much appeal as drinking a bucket of cold sick.

I’m now back on the campaign trail again and have started an action group to save Camden Square Playcentre – yes, it is just down the road from the Amy shrine. This is a truly amazing place that provides holiday play schemes, after school clubs, breakfast clubs and under 5s drop ins. Black kids play with white kids, posh kids play with poor kids and disabled kids play with able bodied kids. The brilliant staff are trained in everything from child protection to child psychology – the idea that they could be replaced by some “Big Society” volunteers is frankly insulting. The playcentre keeps single parents off benefits and keeps stay at home mums with toddlers sane. It gives boisterous six year old boys somewhere to let off steam after school and kids in wheelchairs the chance to make friends with kids from mainstream schools. If this sounds like utopian bullshit, sorry, but it’s the kind of service that actually makes the world a better place.

We’ve had our first meeting and are hopeful that there is a chance that we can do what we did with the nursery and get a voluntary sector provider to take over the running of the service.

Please sign our petition - http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/save-camden-square-playcentre.html - we still need all the help we can get. Thank you for reading.

This post represents the views of the writer and does not necessarily reflect my views or those of Brent Green Party. It is posted as clearly of great interest in light of the closure plans for Treetops and Harmony nurseries.

Sunday 30 October 2011

Weighty message delivered to Jeremy Hunt

From Save Preston Library Campaign:


At 10 am, on October 26th,  we went to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport in central London to present 12,000 signatures and hundreds of letters to the Secretary of State, Jeremy Hunt.  400 were by kids alone. We demand he fulfil his responsibility to.investigate whether Brent’s new library service is “comprehensive and efficient” (as it should be under Museums.and Libraries Act 1964).

He met the council in June, but has he heard our side? Nope. The sheer volume of complaints to him should persuade him to do so.

Empower the Youth: Power the Change



Brent Youth Parliament have launched a campaign to get young people to register to vote:

Since deciding on our main campaign which is to ‘Empower the Youth, Power the Change’. BYP members are planning and hosting a youth conference on November 23rd 2011.

The aim of the conference is for BYP to raise awareness of our campaign ‘Empower the youth, Power the Change’, which is about increasing political knowledge amongst young people.

The conference will also showcase the wide range of positive activities offered in Brent.

BYP members have developed a survey finding out young people’s views on voting, the recent riots and national cuts to youth services.

 What can I do?

If you are a young person aged between ten and 24, please complete the survey and if you answer the question at the end correctly you can choose to be entered in a draw to win £30 Brent Cross vouchers.
Brent Youth Parliament website is HERE

    Now Brent nurseries face closure

    The Council is currently consulting on closing Treetops Children's Centre nursery in Doyle Gardens, Willesden and Harmony Children's Centre nursery in Bridge Road, Neasden. In addition they propose to restructure the recently built and state of the art Willow Children's Centre in Chalkhill to make it mainly a nursery for children with special needs and disabilities.The closures would take place in March 2012.

    Councillor Mary Arnold, Brent's lead member for children and families, told the Brent and Kilburn Times that this was a 'genuine consultation..we have to consider making difficult decisions and ways to prioritise funds for vulnerable children'. However the consultation paper (see below) seems to indicate that there are no viable alternatives to the proposals.

    The definition of 'vulnerable' appears to be changing as the council faces cutting more and more services. Early intervention would indicate provision for economically deprived, ethic minority and refugee children. The proposals narrow this down to children with special educational needs and disability. Of course they need to be catered but so do other children in our deprived areas. Making the Willows mainly for such children raises issues about integration of such  children into mainstream provision. (click on image to enlarge)


    The full Council briefing for parents and carers is available HERE
    The consultation is at www.brent.gov.uk/consultations
    A Save Treetops and Harmony Nurseries Facebook page is HERE

    Parents have set up a petition HERE

    I welcome these restrictions on professional dog walkers

    Dog walker van parked at Fryent Country Park*

    The November 14th Executive will be asked to agree the introduction of the Dog Control Orders in parks. The Orders would limit to six the maximum number of dogs that may be taken onto land by one person; exclude dogs from playgrounds, multi-use games areas, tennis and netball courts and bowling greens; and specify certain areas where dogs are to be kept on leads.

    I welcome the limitation on dog numbers being walked by one person. Professional dog walkers have increasingly been using Fryent Country Park as other boroughs have introduced limits in their parks. The walkers, who charge up to £10 an hour for each dog, sometime have very large numbers of dogs off their leads in the park. I have counted 15 with one walker.  The dogs act as an excitable pack, often rampaging well ahead of the walker, and clearly not under immediate control. It appears to be impossible for that person to be able to pick up all the excrement deposited. In the summer I saw several dogs from a large group rushing around the pony paddock at Bush Farm with the walker nowhere in sight.

    I take classes of primary school children to Fryent Country Park for nature walks with Brent School Without Walls. Generally dog walkers are sensitive and put their dogs on a lead when approaching their children, or take a route to avoid them. However, I have had encounters with the large groups of dogs when the  front-runners, off their leads, see the children, or smell their picnic lunches, and rampage around them, often frightening those children not used to dogs. Again the dog walker is well behind the leading dogs and thus not available to intervene. The mix of excited dogs and scared children is potentially dangerous.

    From my chats with local people walking their companion dogs I think the Orders will be generally welcomed.  One issue on which the orders are silent is more than one person walking with a large group of dogs. Two people could have 12 dogs between them

    * The criticism of professional dog walkers in this posting are not aimed specifically at the owners of this van.

    Saturday 29 October 2011

    Fly-tipping on increase

    There appears to have been an increase in incidents of fly-tipping recently. It is unclear why this is although there have been suggestions that it is linked to fortnightly collections of residual waste and bins being full. This may account for some of them but much of it seems to be linked to builder's rubbish and house clearances. Two huge dumps near Willesden New Cemetery were left by two large lorries in the early hours.

    This is what I saw today while walking from my home near Barn Hill to Birchen Grove and back

    Barn Hill, HA9

    Deanscroft Avenue, NW9

    Old Church Lane, NW9

    Birchen Grove, NW9

    Footpath behind St Andrew's Church, NW9

                  
       Dunster Drive, NW9                       
              

    Co-mingling muddle

    When Brent's new waste strategy was first mooted, Brent Friends of the Earth made powerful submissions to Council committees, LINK raising questions about 'co-mingling', the mixing of all recyclables in one container rather than separation at the kerbside. They suggested that because of the resulting contamination the recyclables would be of less value to waste processing firms. Unsaleable recyclables would end up in landfill or be exported to third world countries, perhaps for sorting by child labour.  FoE raised concerns about the end destination of the waste but the council responded that this was not their concern - their responsibility ended once the waste had been collected by Veolia.

    Recently Channel 4's Dispatches raised some of the same issues in their recent programme 'Britain's Waste'. It can be seen HERE

    Meanwhile Lorraine Skinner has uploaded a new video about the blue bins:



    This has produced a pithy comment from Ian Saville:
    In my street, neighbours are still quite confused about what needs to go where, and some people are clearly just using the blue bin for everything. It seems therefore that the level of contamination is going to be considerably higher than it was before, especially since those collecting the waste now have much less opportunity to check that the bins are being used correctly. Before we are told that this has enormously increased the rate of recycling, we need some way of estimating the extra cost of sorting, the contamination from material that should go into residual, and the difficulties caused by broken glass in the paper. Does anybody know how this is being monitored?

    'Living Doll Cliff ' to be immortalised in Wembley

    Some people think he is in immortal anyway but a statue of Sir Cliff Richard is due to be erected at Wembley's Arena Square. The 2 metre high bronze statue has been commissioned by Thank You For The Music of Oppland, Norway.

    A Council insider said, 'Moscow has Lenin's tomb and soon Wembley will have Cliff's statue.  We expect this to become a major tourist attraction, if not a shrine. Its positioning close to the new Civic Centre will answer critics who have called the Council philistines because we have closed half the borough's libraries. This statue will restore our cultural credentials.'

    Okay, I made the Council's comment up but if YOU want to comment on the planning application follow this LINK. The decision will be made by November 24th.