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News and Comment December 2013

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22 December - Christmas Cheer

Woodside school Woodside schoolEveryone who follows Bexley’s mayor on her Twitter account will know that her lead up to Christmas has been one long round of fun events and Carol Services and no one begrudges her that, but it is a far cry apparently from the Christmas Bexley council metes out to the children in its care.

A message came from a reader who I could identify but probably shouldn’t. She is not a new correspondent having provided information in the past and I am hoping she is just as accurate this time, for there is no easy way to verify what she says. On the other hand it fits in well with what OFSTED said about the way Bexley council treats children in care.

The lady writes about Woodside Special Needs School which is quite hard to track down. It’s given a page or two on Bexley council’s website but is hard to find because the address given leads to Bexley Sports College. It takes a bit of Googling around to discover and confirm that they are one and the same. As the original email says, the following is a shortened extract, it really does look like a prison.


For the first time I went there and as I got nearer to it it reminded me of concentrations camps. I was totally mortified. How can the council spend so many millions of taxpayers’ money on the town centre when those poor children and staff are being sent to such a terrible place?

I am still shaking inside at the knowledge that my poor grandchild has been made to go there. When my daughter told me it was like a prison I honestly thought she was exaggerating. I have never been to an area where such a place existed, where children are hidden out of view in the most inhumane conditions.

Please go and take photos and show the council up and let the people see just how Dickensian things are when it comes to caring for those in this borough whose children cannot find a place in a clean, bright and cheerful school.

Woodside Special Needs School had no decorations up for Christmas, no Christmas tree no children’s work on display. It was the most pitiful Nativity I had ever seen. The children and teachers did their best but the surroundings both inside and outside the building is beyond anything I ever expected to seen in the year 2013. SHAME on Bexley council.

I am crying now as I still cannot believe what I saw.


The writer went on to discuss her conversation with the staff at the school and absolves them of all responsibility. She believes they are doing everything they can afford under the conditions imposed by Bexley council. Maybe mayor Massey could have appealed for a Christmas tree for the school instead of her parlour. Ironically the benefactor is a near neighbour of the school.

 

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