New Year Message

12.00.00am GMT Thu 1st Jan 2004

I wish all my constituents a happy and prosperous New Year. A useful focus for thinking about the future is on the needs of those who are too old or too young to fend for themselves.

On the former, the realities have been brought home forcefully to me by the need to care for my elderly mother who, aged 88, can no longer cope on her own physically or mentally and who lives 200 miles away in my home town of York. I have been left with great admiration for what a caring and competent NHS hospital and social services can accomplish; but, in the end, it is down to families to take responsibility either as carers or to arrange, usually very expensive, residential care.

I hope we shall continue to support the Mayor's charity for carers. it is carers, particularly those who take on decades of responsibility looking after seriously disabled relatives, who are the unsung heroes of society. They all need some respite which is why organisations from the St Augustine's Homelink day respite centre to the Shooting Star children's hospice project in Hampton deserve all our support.

For children more generally it is a depressing truth that their life chances are largely determined in the first few years. We can invest large amounts in schools and colleges but that is often too late for those who start at a disadvantage. As a society we have not yet learnt how to do better for the large numbers who go through school into adult life with no qualifications and poor literacy and numeracy. An interesting, more concentrated approach is being tried in Early Years centres. As usual, as a so called affluent borough, we shall be the last to see these; but a more rapid roll-out by the government would be a valuable investment for the future.