I WAS more than a little disappointed by the coverage given to one of our playschemes last week. Considering the amount of space devoted to the story I thought the following points might have been relevant.

We operate eight schemes in the Northwich area with upwards of 500 children involved. For the seventh year running a wide variety of activities have been provided including outings to Camelot and Gullivers World, the Baths, SK8 Madness etc.

The playleaders work very hard for little money to provide a service for the children. It's not easy to recruit the 25 playleaders and assistants to run the schemes, but we do it.

The CVS staff who undertake the planning and many of the other arrangements for the schemes do so voluntarily on top of their own day to day duties. It's a considerable responsibility which we do not take lightly.

We do our best to ensure adequate communication with parents, usually by letter, but if the playleaders are regularly expected by parents to accept verbal communications via the children how are they to know when these are accurate or not as in the case you reported.

We try to plan for every eventuality not easy given that the schemes are all based outdoors and this summer has not been the best. But if someone makes a mistake whilst acting in good faith I cannot see how anyone's interests, the young playleaders, or the children, are best served by front page coverage in the local press.

Whatever the occasional failings of our arrangements it must be a great deal better than leaving many children to their own devices.

Having said all this, we remain grateful for the support, help and encouragement which the vast majority of parents give us and hope that all the children involved have enjoyed the schemes over the past four weeks.

Arthur Neil,

General Secretary, Vale Royal Council for Voluntary Service.

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