Yesterday’s blog back again
Yesterday’s blog, back again. Didn’t realise it would cause a controversy to take it down late last night!
What has happened to the world!!! When a council fails to safeguard children they are, quite rightly pilloried in every newspaper. Yet, when we take a positive decision to safeguard children, by ensuring that all children left at a supervised play session are only left under the care of qualified CRB checked and legit staff, we get hounded for it! One journalist even declared we were breaching the human rights of the parents we don’t want hanging around!!!!!!!
We run two great adventure playground facilities that operate as a drop off for parents after school and at weekends. We have done this for years, no worries, parents happy and appreciative.
At one playground a few parents started to stay around for all the sessions, this increased to the extent that staff felt they were spending more time worrying about what the parents were up to rather than watching and supervising the children! They should not have been allowed to stay that’s never been the policy, so yes we were lax in allowing it and have now decided to tighten up.
Imagine what those same papers would say if a child was snatched from the playground and we were accused of allowing free access of adults onto our site. Or worse still one of those adults was using it to acquire knowledge of and groom other children - yes sadly it happens we all know that. Again, we would rightly be pilloried . Those same parents don’t stay at school with their kids nor would any one expect them too. If parents want to play with their kids great there are loads of parks and places to go – we’ve got over 40 in Watford along with children’s centres and community centres; but our adventure playgrounds are supervised drop off schemes, where the only adults are our staff who will care for and look after your kids while you do something else. Bliss and oh and it’s free….. As a society we really can’t have it both ways.
There are many alternative places that parents can take their children in Watford, and stay with them. In the town, there are 4 community centres, 5 children’s centres, over 40 areas of park and playgrounds, as well as a museum, two leisure centres, two libraries. Like our adventure playgrounds these are all free to attend. In fact, right next door to Harwoods there is a park and a playground, and the nearest children’s centre is walking distance away.
October 29th, 2009 at 6:33 pm
YES!!!!!!! (You ARE breaching the parents’ human rights!!!!!!!) Duh. AND, ANY sense of proportion.
October 29th, 2009 at 8:58 pm
“staff felt they were spending more time worrying about what the parents were up to”
Perhaps the most worrying phrase that appears in your blog post. Why on earth should staff be worried about “what parents were up to”? It implies that there is something inherently suspicious about a parent wanting to watch their children. Orwellian.
October 29th, 2009 at 10:45 pm
[…] So she deleted her original post - though her tweets still had links to it! This post was later re-made after it had been reclaimed from the […]
October 30th, 2009 at 1:04 am
“CRB checked and legit staff”?
When will people wake up and realise that a CRB check does not confer any guarantee whatsoever? The only thing a CRB check shows is that someone does not have a record. If they did, it would readily show up anyway when they were employed (assuming references were checked). A CRB check does not include those that have offended, but not been caught, or those that may offend in the future - infinitely more of a danger, I would have thought. So “CRB checked and legit” is, for practical purposes, pretty much worthless, though it does net the government £60, or thereabouts, a throw.
Furthermore, you talk about a child being snatched from a playground. I would have thought that, logically, such an event is infinitely LESS likely if a child’s parent is present.
Sorry, but this policy is just plain daft but, sadly, it is in keeping with the stupidity of our times.
October 30th, 2009 at 10:47 am
The way you are trying to twist this story is deplorable.
In the 80s I was a student at Lawrence Haines school and we regularly went to “The Rec” (as Harwood’s adventure playground was affectionately known at the time). Most, if not all parents stayed there while their children played. My family are still in the area and have used the adventure playground over the years and have always stayed with their children. Therefore how can you justify your comment that “a few parents started to stay…”, this is incorrect, parents have always stayed.
What can you possibly mean by “…staff felt they were spending more time worrying about what the parents were up to rather than watching and supervising the children”?
It seems that both of these comments are aimed at creating a very ugly picture of the parents involved. My mother was once one of those parents and my sister is one now, both are excellent mothers and do a lot for their community.
October 31st, 2009 at 12:59 am
that if you do not understand that what you are doing is legitimising the authoritarian drivel that spews daily from this present government and the trash tabloids and the suppressive legislation that accompanies that, and are entrenching the division and distrust that these are creating in society as a whole, you should step down.
The LibDems are the one party that has consistently stood up for civil liberties issues in both the Commons and the Lords, and it doesn’t need to be dragged down by the Mayor of some place, the fame of which primarily lies in its being neither North, nor South, of Watford.
November 1st, 2009 at 7:19 am
Dorothy,
Didn’t they teach you that using too many exclamation marks weaken your argument? Not that in this case it could get any weaker…
You are making me seriously reconsider voting LibDem at the next general election. I think they should expel you from the party as soon as possible to contain the damage.
Oh, and commenting at the Guardian’s CiF as JillyD was probably as pathetic as pulling your blog post.
November 2nd, 2009 at 12:07 am
[…] fail. I suppose, really, the original spin came from Lib Dem Voice though. Worrying. UPDATE: The Mayor reposted the post here. I’m assured it’s word for word the same, although I’m not sure this […]