Save Manchester Sure Start accused of ‘hijacking’ campaign by council spin doctors
Article published: Friday, March 25th 2011
Manchester City Council privately instructed Children’s Services staff to block out parents campaigning to protect their Sure Start centres, according to a leaked email seen by MULE.
Photo by Richard Searle
Children’s centre workers were told a “crib sheet” would be issued to them to ensure that “parent communication sessions” would not be “hijacked by this group” in the email sent by Yvette Cox, communications manager for Children’s Services, on Tuesday 15 March.
In addition to “managing” the sessions, the document instructs staff “not to respond to the group directly” and warns not to “provide the group with any information.”
Meetings between parents and Sir Richard Leese, leader of the council, to discuss the cuts were subsequently arranged for each of the city’s 36 children’s centres following a vigorous campaign organised to protect Manchester’s Sure Start Service against severe cuts.
The secretive tone appears to contradict the public position of Leese, who told parents at Clayton Sure Start on Monday 21 March that “I absolutely support 100 per cent the right of parents to organise.” It is understood that councillors blame ‘miscommunication’ for the email and claim the intention was to prevent names and addresses of parents and staff being given out.
Under the council’s budget plans, passed last week, cuts are to be made to a quarter of the city’s children’s services. Sure Start centres providing day care, health and family support and early education for pre-school children are to be wholly outsourced to be run by schools, voluntary groups and, campaigners fear, private companies.
The tendering process is anticipated to be rolled out over two stages over the next 12 months and it is currently unclear who will run the centres. Executive for children’s services Councillor Sheila Newman stated in a letter to parents that “it is inaccurate and misleading to say that decisions have been taken to close services or offer the services to a big private provider.”
The leaked email. Click on the image twice to read in more detail
Council funding is to end for all services beyond provision for “targeted” families with “complex needs” and its legal requirement to provide all parents with 15 hours of free daycare per week in term time. The council’s direct provision of 25 per cent of the city’s day care places will cease, while fees beyond its legal requirements will be hiked from £126 each week by an average of £30.
The cuts come as part of a national attack on Sure Start by the coalition government; with a Parliamentary question tabled by Labour shadow education secretary Andy Burnham revealing that the service is to lose an average of 23 per cent of its funds. In Manchester £8 million has been lost from the Early Intervention Grant, which pays for the centres in addition to support for disabled children, community groups and guidance and support for young people.
Manchester City Council were contacted by MULE regarding the instructions in the leaked email but have not given a direct reply.
Richard Goulding
More: Manchester, News
Comments
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How can a campaign group hijack its own campaign? The paranoia an spin. Whose side is the Council on? The people or the Tories?
Comment by Sue on March 25, 2011 at 5:41 pm -
What worries the City Council is to face more mass action like that which forced them to reverse their decision to close Levi Baths. Sure Start is valued across the City, and indeed across the Country. Even Lib Dem Ministers in the Coalition have joined Campaigns to save it. Befor e the election Cameron promised not to cut Sure Start.
A mass campaign would get widespread support – and can force the Council to step in and run SS themselves rather than slash and burn (cut back and outsource).
Why does this Labour Council set themselves against their own people – rather than the Tories they claim to be opposed to?
Comment by Mark Krantz on March 25, 2011 at 6:34 pm -
Sue,
even during these cuts, most people at the council are going to keep their jobs.
From this majority there will be no solidarity with those who lose their council jobs, just relief that that they’ve kept their own.
It’s a cruel world, not a socialist one.
Comment by simon on March 26, 2011 at 1:18 am -
[…] of the UK’s children classified as poor live in families where one adult is in employment. But, as covered recently in Mule, child benefits and services are being cut as well in a variety of different ways, potentially […]
Pingback by Lowest common denominator politics: the cuts and the myths of welfare dependency — MULE on April 8, 2011 at 12:58 pm
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