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Ministers to redirect aid to the rural poor
By: Lucy Ward
The Guardian, April 23, 2001
Travelling playbuses and mobile health clinics are to be introduced in rural areas as the government extends its Surestart scheme for poorer families with young children.
The public health minister, Yvette Cooper, will today unveil plans to spend £40m on 16 rural programmes targeted at 10,000 children initially, rising to 20,000 by 2004.
The move is an acknowledgement by the government that it must be seen to be addressing rural poverty as well as inner city problems. Locations for the first wave of schemes include Allerdale in Cumbria and north Devon.
Ms Cooper, addressing a conference organised by the National Children's Bureau, will say that one in four children living in poverty lives in a rural area. She said yester day: "We know that the problems they face can be quite different from those faced in inner cities. People in rural areas can miss out completely at the moment on childcare, or simply opportunities to meet other families with young children. Yet what happens in a child's early years can have a huge impact on the rest of their lives."
The Surestart programme, designed to provide health care and other support for low-income families with children up to four, will be tailored to meet the specific needs of rural communities.
Ministers believe a prime concern for parents in the countryside is the distances they must travel to get to vital services, and believe that much of the money allocated for the new schemes should be spent on tackling the problem.
"Getting to antenatal classes if you've got to take a stroppy toddler on three different buses makes life incredibly difficult, and parents can become isolated if they can't get to childcare or play facilities," Ms Cooper said.
Surestart funds will not be used merely to provide transport to give parents better access to services, but are intended to bring services to rural communities.
Plans include providing travelling health centres bringing doctors and antenatal clinics nearer to rural families. Ms Cooper is also enthusiastic about the concept of
playbuses, in which one floor of a double decker is used as a creche, while the other is filled with computers so that their parents can improve their IT skills.
The Surestart scheme is regarded as one of the government's success stories in its attempt to tackle child poverty. |
