I AGREE with the findings of the Fawcett Society and other recent comments regarding the benefits of a Sure Start programme.

I was a senior social worker in an area where there was a Sure Start centre.

I well remember recommending to a mother of six children that she take the youngest ones there.

She suspected that social services were trying to take her children away. However the excellent head of the centre volunteered to visit the mother in person, and the mother agreed to send the two youngest children as a trial when the others were in school. She knew her own personal weaknesses and found strength and advice from other parents and staff. So these two children and thousands of others did not need to be separated from home.

The Tory policy of cutting off money to councils, which resulted in the closure of Sure Start, was a false economy and harmful to so many children. We now have so many more children, now in their teens, with special needs in school. They lost out because their needs were not met in early years.

Bob Holland, Keighley * Email your letters to alistair.shand@keighleynews.co.uk