Cuts put brakes on Hackney Playbus

The Hackney Playbus in Gilipin Square, Dalston. Photograph: Hackney Playbus

Well-loved children’s facility Hackney Playbus is struggling to provide its usual services because of funding cuts.

Set up in 1972, the mobile play project for young children has already had to sell one of its two two brightly-painted double decker buses.

“We understand that everyone is feeling the financial pinch,” says Jane Lavelle, the Early Years Lead Practitioner for Hackney Playbus,  “but we really feel that the service that we provide for families and children under five in the Hackney area is vital.”

Over half of the Playbus’s income comes from commissions from Children’s Centres, but government cuts to these centres is having a knock-on effect.

“Although the number of children centres who are commissioning us is rising, the amount of money that we receive from the centres is not, because they are facing cuts in their funding,”adds Ms Lavelle. “Over the past year the number of sessions we do has been reduced by over half in places.”

Hackney Playbus travels to different parks and estates in an effort to reach out to families who are normally isolated from other parts of the community: “We offer a link to families with children under five to the services which they need.

“They are usually Travellers, or parents who are on low incomes, benefits or who do not speak English. They don’t have access to information about inoculations, or schools, or how their children should be developing.

“Children’s Centres can seem intimidating to some people, so they often won’t use these facilities.  But because the Hackney Playbus comes to them and is informal and fun, they can easily get this information and their children get a chance to interact with others their own age.”

Local parents are loath to lose the Playbus: “The Playbus is so accessible and informal and it really is unique,” says Melanie Wiley, a Hackney mother of three. “It provides a kind of service that cannot be met by the Children’s Centres and it is a vital one”

Another mother of two, who did not wish to be named, says: “I do not speak good English and I do not know what I would do without the Playbus. They have been such a big help to me, I will be disappointed if they have to stop their sessions.”