Sir, – It was a relief to read Lettie Buxton’s report (front page Farnham Herald, 13/09/18) on the crisis hitting Surrey’s Family Services – it is about time attention was focused on the problems meted out via cuts to this essential service.

I began volunteering with the Youth (now Family) Service almost 10 years ago, and in the intervening years have been witness to, and dismayed and angered by, three unsettling and increasingly worrying upheavals to the service, the most recent of which has resulted in the, to quote, “sudden departure” of the Head of Service – the “sudden departure” should have been by both the leader and CEO of Surrey County Council (SCC) – and places staff under even more pressure and uncertainty.

Far worse are the effects on the families and children for whom continuity within the service is vital. The final, damning Ofsted report on Children’s Services had been on the cards for some time, and the responsibility for this should be laid at the council’s door and not with staff.

SCC’s dedication to “minimising the cost to the local tax-payer” would be a joke, were it not so tragic in it’s fiction and obfuscation. The work so diligently carried out by the Family Services’ teams has been saving taxpayers money at an increasingly impressive rate for the last 10 years – particularly regarding Youth Justice, where rates of offending have been cut to levels showing some of the best results in England and Wales.

Cutting Children’s Centres will not make them “more accessible” to those who need them the most (how, exactly, is SCC going to assess those in “most” need?). It is really good of the county council to ask residents’ views (presumably not the views of those who use the centres) on how they proceed with this, but given it is “at an early stage and no decisions have been made” (ie we don’t have a clue), how dare they continue a with chain of swingeing cuts against these, the most vulnerable of citizens.

Mrs Curran (SCC’s cabinet member for children) describes 20 per cent cuts to Sure Start centres, which surely makes her “underpinning principles” aiming to prevent loss of provision to those in greatest need an absolute nonsense – how, in reality, is this going to be done. Of course, as stated above – no decisions have been made!

At the beginning of the year, when danger signs to the service were flashing red, I wrote to all 11 of Surrey’s MPs, and the leader of SCC, stating my concern for Family Services and begging that they support Surrey’s children. I received just three MP’s replies – Jeremy Hunt, Kwasi Kwarteng and Crispin Blunt. I am grateful for their good manners, even if the replies varied between anodyne, disinterest, and general lack of understanding.

I bring this to readers’ attentions as it gives, I think, a pretty solid indication of how Surrey’s elected respond to crises such as these in their own backyard and involving their own constituents. I also had a reply from the council leader (David Hodge) who, despite having previously appeared to have made something of a stand against imposed cuts by Government, gave no hope of any effective action.

Readers, if you care about children – all children – then protest against these cuts. The outcome of the damage being done to Surrey’s Family Services will not only be the increased cost to the taxpayer, but the huge – and possibly tragic – cost to children and young people who are in difficulty and distress.

Surrey County Council, like most local authorities – of all political colours – have proved themselves gutless in standing up to the catastrophic cuts by the Government. They could have put political ambitions and ideology aside to stand together in de ance of continued austerity but they chose not to. A plague on them all.

- Janet Fearnley, Winston Walk, Farnham

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