We have begun our new financial year at LEYF with tightening of budgets, forecasts for cuts and a likely diminution of the services we offer to children in need. We are being asked to target the services, but how do you target if children are not able to attend universal sessions where well-trained early years professionals can identify children and their families presenting a problem, which could then require targeted help and support?
We are trying to be inventive with our use of funds to ensure that we can continue our work in a multi-generational centre. However, if, as the communities LEYF is based in find, you are also trying to hold down a job, make ends meet in your own house and look after your own family, it can all start to sound a bit 'pie in the sky'.
Currently the funding for the targeted twoyear-old offer and the universal offer for threeplus is either being cut or frozen in the boroughs where LEYF works. It is difficult to gauge what the long-term effect will be, but it is safe to say that unless we come up with some very innovative ways of using the funds, then we are almost inevitably bound to miss those children who require extra support.
Will it be possible to continue to provide quality services? We are facing massive cuts, both in early years services, and the services provided by local authorities to children with specific and complex extra needs. We will have to be exceedingly resourceful with the meagre pickings that are left. To be that resourceful, we need to be allowed to work without constantly completing paperwork and meeting the bureaucratic requirements of some local authorities.
We have a legacy that for a brief time saw the possibility of very positive change for young children; a solid response to the belief in every child's right to an education irrespective of their social status, family background or nationality. We have a coalition Government who continue to insist upon draconian cuts to all walks of life, but a word of warning - cut too deeply and the damage that could be done to young children's learning could do irrevocable damage to this country's future.