The road to hell is, we know, paved with good intentions. This millennium began with multiple good intentions by early years and education providers towards travellers and their children.
But travellers are wondering if they are forever doomed to be corralled around inhospitable sites with attenuated access to inhospitable services.
With the demonisation of gypsies and travellers by The Sun and the Daily Mail, and their champion Michael Howard, the best efforts at an inclusive and flexible approach are being overwhelmed by hate campaigns and by institutional inertia.
Early years providers have prided themselves on their multiculturalism and their flexible provision. There are some subtle and successful exemplars of co-operation between travelling communities and providers. In Northern Ireland, for example, travellers and Barnardo's have worked together on pioneering provision that meets the children's need for safe and secure services that protect their identities as travellers and their rights, within and without their communities, as children.
But there is a huge silence about what is being done to implement the best intentions broadcast by the great and the good.
The Daycare Trust's report urging all local authorities to operate equal opportunities strategies for traveller children is yet to be followed up.
The Trust is about to embark on a project to 'see how to see it through.'
Ofsted published a report two years ago urging all local authorities to improve their access to early years and education services. This was based on a two-year investigation in 11 local authorities, which discovered some good practice in traveller education but also evidence of wildly uneven access and attendance. Ofsted doesn't know what has happened, as it says it has done no follow-up.
Sure Start announced a tranche of inclusion pilot projects in 2003. Sure Start is unable to tell us how those projects have progressed.
The Commission for Racial Equality is engaged in a scrutiny exercise, but only covering site provision, not early years and education.
So, while good intentions plod through the institutions, the demonisation of travellers inflames the general election campaign. Worst of all, fear and loathing targets children, the easy target of fantasies conjuring feral infants, snotty nosed, filthy fingered, exiled on filthy scraps of land, the couriers of settled people's self-fulfilling prophecies.
