Today marks 19 years since we moved into our house. I remember it like it was yesterday. Ours was the first house completed on the road, a quiet cul-de-sac not far from the main town in the area in which I grew up, and where we settled after we married.
Poignant memories
When we first moved in, we had no neighbours, but over the coming months that changed. Many of them are still here and we’ve had many street parties over the years as our children have grown up together. In heavy snow we’ve taken it in turns to walk to buy provisions for each other, we’ve cared for each other’s children, looked out for houses when others are away – the usual stuff.
Looking back, it feels like a real sliding doors moment. If we hadn’t chosen to move here our lives would have been very different.
The day after we moved in, we woke up late; it was half term and we hadn’t set an alarm, expecting to be woken as we usually were by the noises of the day outside. But there were none. Just birdsong. The quiet was noticeable and took a lot of getting used to.
Raising children in a thriving community
When we moved in our oldest daughter was two and she was our main reason for moving. We loved our old house, bought from friends nine years previously and gradually improved over the years. My best friend moved in across the road a year after we did, and another former school friend lived down the street. We could walk into town and back in minutes and we backed on to the park and running track. It was perfect. But we were the only family with a young child, and the roads nearby were busy. We wanted our children to have other children to play with and a safe place to play. There was too much traffic.
So, we settled here, with three decent and well mixed schools within five minutes’ walk, a row of handy shops, a park, some pubs, a welfare, and a community hall. Those first few years we didn’t really mix much in the village beyond our road; we were too busy working hard to pay for the house we’d struggled to afford.
Then a second daughter came along, and the village really came into its own. There were so many baby groups I was barely at home; the contrast between my first maternity leave and this one was huge. When our eldest was born, the local Sure Start projects and children’s centres hadn’t yet opened. But by the time our youngest came along there were three within walking distance of my house.
Friends support us through tragedy
Our lives would have been very different had we not been fortunate enough to have moved to an area with such an abundance of facilities at a time when the government were investing so heavily in early years.
I made friendships through those parent and baby groups that have sustained me ever since. When Pete was diagnosed and after he died, the friends I made back then were still around – despite the fact that some of them didn’t live in the village anymore. They were always on hand to when we needed them to.
Through helping us, those friends were introduced to other friends, many I’ve known since childhood and some more recently. The network grows, we help each other out, frequently in tiny ways which nevertheless make such a huge difference to all our lives.
So far, I’ve managed to avoid needing any formal support to cope with my grief, I’m not taking anti- depressants, I’ve kept working and haven’t yet needed to draw on other services to get me though. In fact, I haven’t set foot in a doctor’s surgery for myself for almost five years.
I realise how fortunate I am, and I put that down to my amazing friends. A network of people who have sustained me and my family through the roughest of times. Without them I’m pretty sure I’d need a range of very expensive services from the state to help me through.
Reducing services means reducing friendships
Recently I was speaking with some practitioners in private childcare who had recognised that many of the parents of children in their two-year-old and baby rooms hadn’t had the chance to go to baby groups when their children were born; lockdown had prevented that. Those all-important networks that lead to lifelong friendships hadn’t been formed. Some parents had no one to talk to about whether their child was developing typically, leading to an increase in anxiety for parents and some late diagnoses for speech and language delays amongst other issues.
A lack of facilities and centres in the local area also impacts on children and families in ways which are sometimes not initially tangible. This negatively impacts upon parental confidence in their own abilities, networks to support and sustain, the confidence to know when support is necessary and how and where to seek it.
The people I was speaking to had recognised the huge impact this has and set up their own ‘parents group’ to help plug this gap. But not everyone is as fortunate as they are. It really is down to luck, and it shouldn’t be.
Fears for families in austerity
I am concerned that as services are cut to the bone, the long-term impact for children and families, and society as a whole will be huge. We regularly hear the rhetoric, ‘the early years are the most important’ but all too often that’s all it is; empty rhetoric, just words.
The reality on the ground is that those working with our youngest children work for minimum wage, or barely above, and the current government proposes to reduce ratios or possibly remove them altogether, so that the work they do will become virtually impossible.
Those working in schools should be concerned about the long-term impact of reduced ratios. If there are concerns or worries about children coming into schools with language delay now, imagine what it will be like when the professionals they work with have to support even more children.
And that’s if the providers can find the staff in the first place. The rate of attrition in the sector is huge. Hardly surprising when you can earn more money working in retail and not have all the pressure of safeguarding responsibilities, curriculum development and looming draconian Ofsted inspections.
I sincerely hope that the new government will reflect on the current state of services in the early years sector and look at the positive long-term impacts of services such as Sure Start, Children’s Centres, health visitors, speech and language therapists and community groups.
Investment in the early years is an investment in society as a whole, for both the children themselves and their parents, and it’s vital we get it right. Otherwise, we will be paying the price for a very long time into the future.
