The Princess of Wales has said ‘it is more important than ever’ to support the development of young children as she launches her new early years campaign.
‘In these difficult times, it is more important than ever to help support parents and caregivers provide loving safe and secure homes for their babies and young children to survive.’ Kate
Thanks for doing this Kate and I hope and pray that it starts to readdress some of the imbalance in this country. My personal target list would be something like this:
- Change of government. We need a government that is pro social services, youth and children’s work, schools and supportive of children.
- Funding. We need serious funds at ground level. We need face to face workers who will be able to work with local people one on one. Remove targets. Often they are you need to visit so many people this week. Rather targets should be along the lines of, “How many meaningful conversations did you have this week?”.
- Attitudes and opportunities. Attitudes need to change as we seek to include parents in decisions that will change their community. Opportunities to be part of the community making these decisions. Not sitting on committees, they are painful and people seem indifferent to these ‘power’ sources. Community organising is an approach that links people with interests together and unites them to become a decision making power base that should be allowed to action change.
I hope that this is not an opportunity to look good sitting next to children. When you make real change it will happen and people won’t even know you were behind it. Take yourself out of the picture and allow others to be the photo opportunity.
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