Community isolation can be a barrier to effective early years provision. It can occur in both rural outposts and inner city areas. Now Sure Start is showing how to address these problems with programmes in Northumberland's Haltwhistle and east London's Shadwell.
Haltwhistle has been a beneficiary of the Sure Start Western Tynedale (SSWT) programme, which won the Smarter Children's Services category in the Partners in Excellence awards. The team is particularly proud that theirs was the only mini programme among the winners.
The programme serves Haltwhistle and its 12 surrounding parishes. Here the effects on the agricultural community of the 2001 foot and mouth disease epidemic still linger. Some babies born when farms were cut off from the outside world are now starting school and revealing speech and language difficulties. A more recent problem came with the closure of Haltwhistle's biggest employer. Men had to leave home to find alternative work, effectively creating single-parent families throughout the week.
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