It appears that the world-famous Pen Green Centre for Children and their Families in Northampton may be in danger of closure, due to government funding formulas. But there is still hope for its survival – and for the future of England’s children – as the buzzards begin to pick over the wreckage of the Johnson government.
Why is Pen Green important?
In 1983, as the abandonment of the traditional industrial communities by the Thatcher government began to bite, the Pen Green Centre for Children and their Families opened in Corby, Northamptonshire. Iron ore sources had been mined in Corby since Roman times, but it grew into a town around the iron and then the steel industry, following the industrial revolution.
Pen Green Centre was set up as in a disused 1930s school building, housing an integrated service for families, provided by a multi-disciplinary team including a teacher, social worker, early years worker and early health practitioner. It drew its funding from Northamptonshire County Council and was jointly managed by education, social services and the local health authority.
The concept of integrated services, which was eventually to become the national target of the flagship Labour government early years project Sure Start, was then in its infancy, and the practitioners of Pen Green therefore worked from first principles.
At first, local families were not sure about using precious funding for such an untested type of service, but the practitioners, led by Margy Whalley, worked with local families, local politicians and local authority officers to create the provision from the basis of community education principles.
It takes a village …
Whalley had worked on community projects in Brazil and Papua New Guinea, and stated that her ethos stemmed from working with local communities on the basis of negotiation, embracing multiple perspectives. Negotiations were conducted along the following principles:
- Take what people offer and build on it
- Pride matters: never humiliate; never blame
- Find reciprocal ways of working
- Look to elders for help and advice
- Don’t accept minoritisation
- Insist on complexity
In summary, as the old African proverb (or possibly internet meme) proposes, it takes a village to raise a child, and those who work directly with children know that the way that this is done best is to support and educate the whole community.
Community education: confident parents, confident children
I started my own teaching practice in community education in the mid-1990s, not in Northampton but in Leeds, working with mothers of young children, from the position of being a mother of young children myself at that time. It was much more piecemeal provision than that which was then being offered at Pen Green, but we did share their vision of empowering families, and I think overall, we did a good job. My own programme was drawn from an Open University resource entitled ‘Confident Parents, Confident Children’ and that was our principal objective.
Several of the mothers with whom I worked went on to study for formal qualifications, often in childcare and sometimes leading into teaching or social work training. Parent development has always been a core feature of Pen Green’s work. Their initial efforts to support parents in understanding their child’s development a little better also blossomed, into an on-site training, research and education centre.
Children and community in danger
Sadly, it has been announced that the Pen Green Centre is now in danger of closure, due to a funding row.
The co-director, who joined the staff as a 17-year-old trainee nursery nurse when it opened in 1983, commented that Conservative MP Graham Stuart chaired a House of Commons education select committee meeting at Pen Green in 2014, in which he warned that “rare, peculiar centres of excellence that do a brilliant job” should be protected from funding cuts.
But as we are finding out, this Conservative government does not operate along the ethos that directed their predecessors, and it seems that the institutions and initiatives that empower ordinary people are no longer considered relevant.
For example, a recently published white paper on schools contains a ‘parent pledge’ that does not mention what parents themselves can do for their children other than complain if “your child falls behind in English or Maths”, while the ‘pledge’ for Early Years is “more focused literacy and numeracy teaching”.
There is no mention of the growing number of families who are forced to use food banks, and who exist in a constant state of emotional and financial stress in which children struggle to focus on schoolwork. This is not ‘levelling up’ but levelling off, as families, children and young people break down under the strains that modern society places on them, while being continually berated to ‘do better’ by those who should be trying to help.
The white paper also does not mention the problem that schools continue to have with rolling Covid infection as each new variant emerges, causing both children and teachers to lose time in school throughout the year, putting education staff and pupils under additional physical and mental strain.
And given that the government has dropped any advisory role on basic infection mitigations such as masking and social distancing, and given that from next week Covid tests will cease to be provided without charge, the problem stands to worsen as each new variant emerges and runs rife amongst a society that is careless about preventing and detecting disease.
If we return to the fundamental principles of Pen Green – the common sense and empirically supported hypothesis that health, education and social services should be integrated to produce physically and emotionally healthy children who arrive at school ready to settle down to learning – it is plain that that the current government’s approach to children’s services is the complete antithesis.
Looking forward with hope
As Margaret McMillan pointed out at the turn of the 19th century, it is impossible to effectively educate a tired, stressed and hungry child, and it is the height of adult cruelty to insist against such odds that disadvantaged children enter a public education system that bullies them to ‘perform’ while not concerning itself with their holistic welfare.
Nevertheless, it seems that Johnson and his ministers continue to live in a bizarre and sinister fantasy in the 21st century, in which they believe that they have no responsibility to those who voted them into power, while the general public has the responsibility to fulfil the demands that the government places on them. This, as I have pointed out in previous articles, is a highly dysfunctional relationship that relies upon denial and coercive control.
All that those of us who care about children’s welfare can hope, is that with the building evidence of Johnson’s Russian oligarch connections, and the rolling out of the ‘PartyGate’ fines which confirms the existence of concrete evidence that Johnson misled the House of Commons, then perhaps he and his abysmal cabinet will soon be consigned to their ultimate, infamous position in England’s historical record.
