To think my local Surestart centre is a hellhole

[passionberry]

Or am I being PFB and maybe a bit snobby?

We have just moved house to a different part of the country and it's a quite an affluent area.

Where we lived before (up North) I used to go to my local Surestart centre loads - baby matters course, stay and play and a young mums group. It was lovely, clean and the staff were great.

TBH I expected the same here, if not better, but omg it was soo depressing. It smelled of wee, the loos were out of order and the worst thing was that the play mats had stains on them and the toys were filthy. I probably am being totally PFB but I couldn't bring myself to let dd touch them

AND when we did singing at the end, there was a smell of poo - and everyone laughed but no one checked to see which child it was!!

And all the kids had colds and/or gammy eye (not sure what medical term is) and I'm not surprised if no one ever gives the toys a wipe over.

Huh. I am and wish I could go home to our old town where everything was nice.

I know that targetting is a big issue for childrens centres, mine will shortly be stopping a couple of classes as no targetted families are attending (although these are from the active together team).

But there is no excuse for dirt, I would feed it back, if centres are not being used fully then they could be the first ones to go

I work in a ghetto Sure Start centre and its clean. All the toys are wiped with disinfectant wipes after each play session, as are the baby mats. You definetly need to write and tell the centre that they should look at doing this.

I have low grade OCD and they love it when I go to the surestart centre. While DS plays I spend my time sorting the toys into the correct boxes so they're not jumbled up, cleaning up grubbyness etc.... The staff are always very grateful... :)

Lovely one where I am (Berks). It was invaluable when the DC were younger.

I live in London. London (if you didnt know ) is an odd sort of place. You have very well off areas a couple of streets away from the most deprived wards in the country. We have several hundred SS centres close by.

The one in yummy mummy valley is friendly, cosy but absolutly filthy! My theory is that they are expecting the cleaning fairy char to arrive at any minute.

The one in the 'ghettotasitic' (that'd be me then) area is spotless. Ok there is the occassional slanging match between Mason and Kayden's mum but the toys are clean. I dont mind my PFB (that precious fifth born) crawling around on the floor.

There has been a lot of talk about the middle classes taking over surestart and I think this is a bit unfair (dont fall over, noone has hacked my account). It doesnt matter how much you advertise baby yoga round here, my mates are NOT going to do it. It is totally alien to them and they would feel stupid doing it. So the classes are made up of middle class mummies (and me). They are getting something out of it so its not going to waste.

It becomes a problem when the less affluent mothers who cannot afford to pay 18 quid a session for baby signing, yoga, massage get pushed out of the way by mums who can.

If that isnt happening I cant see the problem. I would love my mates to come and so some massage etc and maybe it will trickle down in a generation or two, who knows?

MrsDV makes some very good points above, ones I hadn't exactly thought of.

I live in a rough area, but I'm quite posh (ha). I went to massage, yoga etc at Surestart just for something to do, but they were a bit poncey (think whale music, light boxes, deep breaths, chanting). All the mums were like me, didn't see any of the rougher new mums off our estate. Some people who really do need it just won't/don't access these services and that is a HUGE problem for Surestart.

All the classes, groups and schemes at Surestart looked brilliant to me (dad's allotments, messy play, BFing support, toy library, rhythm kids) but then I'm an outgoing and enthusiastic type who loves community stuff (teacher) - but a young 21 year old new mum who has hung around the house since leaving school would prob be intimidated by attending them.

Yeah, I think I will write to them. It really was minging.

It's a shame as I think Surestart centres are brilliant (well my old one was!) - I agree they have a hard time attracting the people who it was set up to help but I don't think I am "sharp elbowed middle class" and I would struggle to pay £18 per session.

If they stop one mum from feeling isolated and getting PND with their free baby massage course then surely are worth weight in gold!

Anyway - I might try and find another one to go to. I am in Surrey btw.

The problem is that if Surestart now starts to loose its funding the previous services are not necessarily still running anymore to take up the slack again!

I have helped run a NCT drop in group for new mums for the last 3 years, since the surestart centre opened its own version we have seen numbers slowly but surely drop as we just cannot compete with the building/funding/staffing of there group to ours run by volunteers.

We are having to make tough decisions about what we are going to do going forward, it would not be easy to get this group going again if it stopped now, but up until surestart it was the only group in the area that was purely for new mums!

I know in our neighbouring area that had one of the first surestart centres built, that about half of the toddler groups have closed in the last 3 years its been open, as they just couldn't get the volunteers to help run them anymore!

Excellent point weird. All the independant drop ins shut within a couple of years of surestart opening round here. Sure start didnt charge in the beginning so people went to their groups rather than shell out 50p

Groups that had been running for 40 years had to shut

Sure start did begin to charge after a while but it was too late.

Now the services are already being pulled back and the gaps are showing. One of the things I find really sad is that some local 'stay and plays' are using the sessions for preschool rather than drop ins. This puts all the emphasis on formal education rather than informal play with parental involvement.

Big mistake - huge.