VITAL SUPPORT TO PARENTS Being a new mum is tough. Sure Start gave us hope. Now it’s being taken away
NEW mum Sherrin Bergqvist lay in her bed in the early hours of a freezing January morning in tears.
She had recently had her first child and expected to be blissfully happy.
But anxiety and depression had gripped her as she struggled to breastfeed 16-weekold son Dalton.
Single-mum Sherrin had moved areas and had no friends to turn to. Her elderly parents lived some distance away.
Feeling desperately isolated and still exhausted from the trauma of Dalton’s emergency birth, Sherrin felt she had nowhere to turn.
Sherrin, 44, said: “I can remember sitting in bed at three in the morning in the dark and cold and just crying.
“I was trying to breastfeed my little boy and it just wasn’t working.
“I felt like I’d failed as a woman. Giving birth and looking after your child should be the most natural thing in the world.
“But I didn’t know what I was doing or whether I was doing anything right.”
COURAGE
But Sherrin had the presence of mind to seek help from her local Sure Start centre – the bedrock of support to parents and families in communities across the nation.
Hundreds of the UK’s 3,251 centres are facing an uncertain future as a seemingly endless wave of budget cuts puts them under threat.
Back in January 2010, when Sherrin was at her most vulnerable, Sure Start offered the lifeline she so badly needed.
In her moment of despair she wrapped little Dalton up tightly and walked through the cold streets to her local centre in Stoke-on-Trent, her adopted home town after moving from Cheshire.
Sherrin told the Sunday Mirror: “I had finally got the courage together to go and get help. I can remember walking there in the ice and snow.
“Just walking into the place made a difference to me and I’ve never looked back.
“There was only one other mum there because the weather was so bad. But we hit it off and we are friends even now.
“For the first time I stopped feeling isolated and scared.
“It was the friendliness. From the way the receptionist treated me from the moment I walked through the door. “It was just the warmth and the support. “They made me feel at home straight away. There were people going through what I was going through and that made it all seem better. We were in it together.
“That’s a massive part of what Sure Start does for people.”
The Sure Start programme was set up in 1998 by then Chancellor Gordon Brown. Its aim was simple – to make sure disadvantaged families got the help they needed.
Other organisations like JobCentres and the NHS were encouraged to form links with Sure Start to help parents.
And some centres offerered classes like baby massage and regular play sessions to encourage youngsters’ development.
Slowly, Sherrin, who used to work at a centre for domestic violence victims, rebuilt her confidence.
Regular sessions at Sure Start helped her understand what she was going through and that others were in the same position.
She started going to the centre more regularly as Dalton got older. There were different classes on offer and she found the social side of things invaluable.
And when her second child, daughter Serraya, was born she used Sure Start even more. But in 2013 Sherrin was diagnosed with breast cancer and again Sure Start offered invaluable support.
Sherrin said: “Everyone was brilliant. They all rallied round to help. And during my chemotherapy, being able to take the children somewhere that I knew was safe and secure and where everyone was friendly made such a difference.
“People sometimes think that Sure Start is like a creche or something but it’s not – it’s a community.”
BRUTAL
Sherrin, who has been in remission for two years, is now a volunteer at her local centre and is active in the campaign against Sure Start closures.
She has seen first-hand the help they give to the most vulnerable. And now she fears brutal government cuts are forcing local councils to close them.
Across the country the picture is bleak as spending on Sure Start has fallen by 47 per cent. Centres have been closing at a rapidly increasing rate – more than 300 went between 2011-15. In 2011, 12 closed. The year after saw 27 shut, then in 2013 another 33 went. The figure for 2014 was 85 and in 2015 it rocketed to 156.
In Stoke, the council needs to save £61million from its overall budget in the next three years and the consultations over Sure Start end on February 23.
Some cuts are already known. The number of Play and Learn staff is going to drop from 57 to just nine to look after a city where 260,000 live.
No firm plans have been announced about the future of the city’s Sure Start children and parents from every background. Sherrin’s story is a powerful reminder of the difference Sure Start makes. She puts it so well in describing her feelings of being put at ease as