Tory cuts will adversely affect children with mental health issues

http://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2015/may/16/letters-tory-cuts-education-mental-health-poverty

Version 0 of 1.

Liv Darling (Letters) is correct in calling for more funding, not less, for the Children and Adolescents Mental Health Services, especially for schoolchildren. However, the point needs to be made that poverty is a major cause of mental health issues and this is now set to increase as Tory cuts will push even more vulnerable families into homelessness and debt. State schools in disadvantaged areas are the front line for these children; resources to support these families are already pared to the bone and when this is combined with the reduction in schools funding also planned by the new Tory administration, a very bleak picture emerges.

Many children affected by the cuts will present behavioural difficulties and classroom teachers, teaching assistants and SENCos [special educational needs co-ordinators] in schools, SEMH [social, emotional and mental health] specialist support teachers and social services will be overwhelmed with referrals. The negative impact on the educational opportunities for these children will be immense. Cuts will also hit families with physically disabled children, and they will simply have to join the queue around the block. Grammar and private schools, which select out children like this, either through entrance tests or parental income, will see none of this. I wonder how many people who voted Tory considered issues like these before making their X?

Max Fishel (assistant headteacher)

Bromley

Generosity at Little Gidding

Many thanks are due to Vanessa Thorpe for her article on Little Gidding church (“Church that gave refuge to Charles I and inspired TS Eliot in urgent need of rescue”). I was baptised there three years before TS Eliot’s famous visit of 1936. It is not surprising Little Gidding inspired the romantic, high church royalist Eliot to write some of the greatest poetry of his century and it owes much to his advocacy. Perhaps Simon Jenkins does the Ferrars less than justice when he describes their community as being “dedicated to self-purification”, when in addition to their quasi-monastic discipline, they were unfailingly generous in providing hospitality, education and medical care for the impoverished local population. Little Gidding stands as a reminder of a remarkable experiment during a crucial period in the history of the English church and deserves every possible effort to ensure its preservation for future generations.

Robert Torrens (Rev)

Bury St Edmunds

Protecting local services

Local authorities have made £20bn savings since 2010 following reductions in government funding of 40%. Councils have worked hard to shield residents from the impact. However, efficiencies cannot be remade or buildings resold. Further local government funding reductions over the next five years is not an option. The new government must consider the consequences that further cuts, without radical reform of the way public money is spent, will have on the services that bind our communities and protect the most vulnerable.

Related: No more cuts, Tory councils tell George Osborne

Vital services, such as collecting bins, filling potholes and caring for the elderly, would struggle to continue at current levels. It would leave other parts of the public sector, such as the NHS, left to pick up the pieces of councils scaling back services. If our public services are to survive the next few years, councils need fairer funding and the freedom to pay for them. The public sector has to stop working in silos and join up even more.

We need a new settlement for England that devolves decisions about infrastructure, transport, housing, skills and health and social care to local areas so they can tackle the big issues facing residents. Councils could then ensure elderly and disabled people receive the care they deserve, young people are equipped with skills to find local jobs, desperately needed homes are built, roads are maintained to high standards and every child has a place at a good school.

Cllr David Sparks, chairman of the Local Government Association, representing 375 councils

What hope for West End girls?

Gurinder Chadha is to be applauded for hoping that her musical of Bend it Like Beckham will see a “row of young women just agog because they’ve never seen girls on stage reflecting them” (“It’s been the most satisfying thing ever”, New Review). Sadly, given the price of West End theatre tickets, I fear this may be in vain.

Neil Macehiter

Cambridge

Tech solution to climate change

Two of your correspondents argue that the growth in the number of people on the planet means an increase in greenhouse gas emissions (Big Issue,). Another states our constant search for economic growth is a contributor. All three are right, but there is no politically feasible mechanism for these trends to be reversed. Similarly, developments in renewable energy and energy efficiency may slow the growth in carbon emissions a little, but they are coinciding with continuing worldwide investment in new coal- and gas-fired power stations.

Therefore, if we are serious about preventing runaway climate change, we have to stop fooling ourselves that we are going to achieve it by leaving vast quantities fossil fuels in the ground. Sadly, that’s just not going to happen. Politicians, scientists and environmental campaigners need instead to focus on ways to take CO2 out of the atmosphere (carbon scrubbing and reforestation) and to cool the planet artificially (geoengineering).

Richard Mountford

Tonbridge, Kent