No Creche: Sample Letter to Feminist Event Organisers

CRAP! Collective is active in encouraging all events, gatherings and meetings to be as parent/carer friendly and child-friendly as possible.

This is so that parents/carers with young children are not unfairly discriminated against and prevented from attending or participating in such events.

We are particularly concerned about the lack of understanding about the needs of parents/carers/children within feminist circles.

Below is one example of a letter that was sent to the organising group of a recent feminist gathering, who had stated there was definately not going to be a creche provided in reply to our first query about the event.

Feel free to use/adapt this sample letter to send to other feminist events with no child provisions you are attending:

To [Feminist Organising Group],

Thats a shame that there is no creche provision for this event. In the
event of no creche provision, the next best move is to have a space/corner
which is a dedicated kids area with colouring in/toys and books and
seating for parents/carers.

If parents/carers have to take their chidlren with them to meetings, then
there should be toys/colouring-in etc provided to occupy them and allow
parents/carers to concentrate and contribute to the meeting. It would be a
good idea to have volunteers (from the organising group ideally)attending
each meeting who are able to play with the children if they start to get
bored or need a drink etc. Or ask around at the begninning of the meeting
for volunteers so that everyone attending should share childcare in this
way.

Facilitators should make it clear to the attendees that the children may
make noise but that the parent/carer should not be made to feel bad about
this, but supported, as there are no creche factilities. People can just talk louder or offer their services to play with the child/get a snack.

Feminist events must be inclusive to all and not discriminate against
parents/carers, especially affecting the majority of single mothers on low
incomes with no childcare-support network.

No creche provision means that even if you adhere to the parent/child-friendly organising suggestions above, the liklihood still is that parent/carers will decide not to attend your event or not be able to participate fully in discussions. Input from feminist parents/carers should be valued, not discourged.

I hope your organising group will consider the above points prior to your
event this [Saturday].

All the best,

[You or Your Collectives Name]

Reclaiming Birth, and the Albany Midwives

Below is an interesting article by our sisters in London anarcha feminist kolektiv, about reclaiming birth and the recent closure of the Albany Midwifery Practice, Peckham, South London.

Reclaiming Birth, and the Albany Midwives

The Albany Midwifery Practice provided a free service – as part of the NHS - for women around Peckham for over twelve years. As an independent group, based in the community and sub-contracted by Kings Healthcare Trust, the Albany midwives provided individual, continuous maternity care for all kinds of women, including those who are often denied proper choices by the Health Service: working-class women, women from ethnic minorities, those with mental and physical disabilities or with medical risks.

The Albany midwives aimed to provide choice, continuity and control for women, with a philosophy that pregnancy and birth are a normal part of women's lives, not a medical problem. They would provide information and let women make their own decisions, about their maternity care and the birth itself. They believed that women deserved continuity, so guaranteed access to the same pair of midwives throughout pregnancy, giving them a chance to develop a mutually-respectful, trusting, relationship with each woman before she gave birth.

This type of care is understandably popular with women, and has been proven to result in lower rates of infant mortality, lower rates of caesarian section (less than half the national average), and also much higher rates of home-birth and breastfeeding. 74% of the women using the Albany decided they didn't need pain relief during labour.

This quality of care is rarely available on the NHS. Although there are some other group practices which operate in a similar way to the Albany midwives, in many areas women have to pay privately if they want this kind of maternity care, which puts it beyond the means of most.

In December 2009, Kings Healthcare Trust abruptly terminated its contract with the Albany midwives, without any consultation ( either with the midwives themselves or those who used their services) or warning (even for those women about to give birth in the next few weeks).

Kings claimed that the issue was one of patient safety, as earlier on in the year a baby had died one week after being delivered by the Albany. Kings commissioned a report from the Centre for Maternal and Child Enquiries (CMACE). They claimed that babies delivered by the Albany Practice at this time had higher rates of “Hypoxic Ischaemic Encephalopathy” ( brain damage caused by lack of oxygen), than those delivered by midwives directly employed by the Trust. These figures have been contested since the outset, with various organisations, including the National Childbirth Trust (NCT), criticising the CMACE reports. Despite requests, the full reports have still not been made public. Although Kings terminated the Albany contract on the grounds of patient safety, they then offered the same midwives jobs within the Trust's own midwifery service. All of them declined the offer.

The closure of the Albany Midwifery Practice prompted a range of protests, including a large, very vocal, very colourful march and rally in central London on Sunday 7th March. The 'Reclaiming Birth' march was called by the Albany Mums Group, both to protest the closure and to push for better, more women-centred approaches to childbirth. It was supported by the NCT, the Royal College of Midwives, the Association of Radical Midwives, Independent Midwives UK, the Alliance for Improvement in Maternity Services (AIMS) and many feminist groups.

If Kings succeed in damaging the reputation of the Albany midwives, this could have serious repercussions on a wider scale. Their model of care has long been recognised as a way of improving outcomes for mothers and babies. Most women in the UK don't get offered this level of choice, or continuity. Instead, they are only offered an obstetric-based model of care, institutionalised, with high levels of medical intervention and operative deliveries. The choice to birth at home is dependent on the availability of midwives, and unfortunately there is a shortage of midwives. Those already working in the NHS are under-paid and over-worked, and there are not enough staff to provide the quality of care women deserve, let alone set up loads of small group practices like the Albany.

Centralised, industrial-scale obstetric care may be expedient for bureaucrats, but does not allow true choice, and does not equate with a satisfying, safe and empowering birth experience. As public services suffer more cuts, our already over-stretched and under-resourced maternity services are in crisis, and ultimately this is bad news for us all.

For more information on the Albany Midwifery Practice, the CMACE report,and the 'Reclaiming Birth' march, visit: www.savethealbany.org.uk.

Another article worth reading: “Industrial Birth”, by Shonagh of Dublin's Revolutionary Anarchafeminist Group (RAG). www.adbusters.org/magazine/80/industrial_childbirth.html.

Birth – Everyone's Business

Are you alive? Then you were born.
The way in which you were born affected your immediate chances of survival, the kind of nourishment you would come to receive and your potential for intelligence, growth, health, emotional development and social adjustment. It helped set the relationships you would have with your parents, by either encouraging or preventing their ability to positively bond with you. It was monumentally important in your life – but you probably won’t remember it.

Your mother will. Her experience is likely to have had a profound effect on her. Was it good? Did she feel free, empowered and in control amongst people she loved and trusted? If she did, she was fortunate and more likely to be able to love, care for and breastfeed you thus setting you up for a lifetime of good health and well-being outcomes – providing resilience to the physical, emotional and social challenges of life.

Was your father there? Did he welcome you into the world? Did he feel involved and know his child from the outset? Did he accept you into his heart as his own to love and protect regardless of how life and relationships would progress? Were other parents, family members, friends and communities supported and supportive? Were you all as a family welcomed, provided and cared for in the world? Were you as a baby given the chance to thrive? Because it affected you for life.

Perhaps you have or want children of your own? Perhaps it will happen unexpectedly. Or maybe you hope for a different, better society, or a revolution? For the human race to continue in any form, from utopian to post-apocalyptic, babies will need to be born, parents will need to care for them and communities will need to raise them. How it’s done isn’t just important; it's integral, and its effects are infinitely wide ranging. It matters, to you, to me, to everyone.

None of us can afford to forget about childbirth, but that's easily done when we don’t remember it happening to us, and the event itself is hidden away in special secret places, which often provide difficult, negative and traumatic experiences. Lets stop sidelining this as a women’s issue, a health issue or identity politics. It’s huge, it’s vital and we should all be taking an interest and a responsibility for the coming generations.

London Anarcha Feminist Kolektiv
www.lafk.wordpress.com
lafk@riseup.net

Friends of Hackney Nurseries Petition - please sign

Community nurseries in Hackney are facing serious cuts to funding. These cuts once implemented will see a loss of jobs in nurseries, as well as a serious reduction in nursery provision, and are a disaster for the nursery workers, parents, and children.

***please distribute widely***

Sign the Friends of Hackney Nurseries petition and send the Hackney Learning Trust a loud and clear message!

----

To: Hackney Learning Trust

This April, at least 8 community nurseries in Hackney were informed of immediate cuts ranging from £30,000 – £50,000 for each nursery. These cuts were implemented without consultation or a fair and open process. They mean a serious threat of nursery closures. The Hackney Learning Trust and Hackney Council are denying that there is a programme of cuts to nursery provision.

We, the undersigned, call on the Hackney Learning Trust to
1) immediately reverse the decision to cut funding to nurseries’
commissioning grants
2) have full consultation with community nurseries about funding and answer
Friends of Hackney Nurseries questions on how money is being allocated

*Sign the petition here: www.petitiononline.com/fhn/petition.html*

For more details of this struggle to fight cuts to community nurseries in Hackney, East London and how to get involved in the campaign visit http://friendsofhackneynurseries.wordpress.com

No to Welfare Abolition - the national planning meeting

*No to Welfare Abolition - the national planning meeting*

Manchester University Students Union, *Steve Biko Building, Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 9PR, rooms MR1 and MR2*

Saturday 17th April Arrive 11.30am for 12 noon start. Finish 5.30pm.

Our rights to welfare are under attack from all sides. The Welfare Reform Act passed last year is making it harder for single parents, unemployed workers, people with illness, disabilities or impairments and carers to get by. High profile poster campaigns target 'benefit thieves', while benefit fraud is at a low and bankers escape the recession with billions of taxpayers' money.

17 April is our chance for welfare and disability rights activists, members of unemployed workers' groups and trade unionists to get to together, build links of solidarity and plan our struggles. If you are organising to defend welfare or want to start doing so, please make sure people from your group come along!

Free lunch will be provided.

Let us know you are coming by emailing *hackneyunemployedworkers@gmail.com*.

Contact *rebecca.galbraith@yahoo.co.uk* if you want to use the free creche.

Join the email discussion list here: * http://groups.google.com/group/no-to-welfare-abolition*

Class, childcare and the Women’s Liberation Movement.

Below is the text of a leaflet circulated at the WLM@40 conference at Ruskin College, Oxford, UK, (http://www.wlm40conference.org.uk/booking.html).

Class, childcare and the Women’s Liberation Movement.

Anticapitalist feminists have written a letter to the organisers of the wlm@40 conference, raising concerns about the price of the event and the lack of childcare at the conference.

According to the call for papers
“The aim of this conference is to create a space for debate about the issues facing feminists today and celebration of feminist work. WLM@40 will capture the energy, vibrancy and vision of the first [Women's Liberation Movement conference held at Ruskin College in 1970], building on the foundations that it laid. This conference will reflect on the historical significance of the 1970 (and later) conferences, share information and skills for contemporary feminist activism, create and celebrate feminist art and look to the future of feminism(s). Speakers will cut across boundaries of age, class, location and sexuality and voices that were originally absent will now be heard.”

It is hard to imagine how a conference that is so prohibitively expensive will cut across class boundaries.

To be working class often means that we do not have access to the funds to do the things we would like to do and many things are put out of our reach.
As women living under capitalism, all our work is undervalued and underpaid and we receive no income for the work as carers we often do. Many of us in the UK are dependent on paltry state benefits and those of us who are in paid work are facing increasing strain on our already stretched budgets.
The feminisation of poverty is something that we are all aware of, and much grass roots feminist activism targets this fact.
Much of feminist activism is unpaid, we do it for free and in our spare time, because we care about women and the conditions we face. The majority of feminist groups, organisations and campaigns are underfunded, if funded at all.
As feminists we recognise the oppressive and inherently exploitative nature of capitalism, we feel its effects in our everyday lives, so we act in solidarity with those around the world who experience the far worse effects of the capitalist nightmare -- death, poverty, ecological destruction, etc.

The past few years have seen an increase in feminist activism around the UK, much of it anticapitalist, and it is only right that this should be celebrated. The first conference 40 years ago was dynamic and historically significant, and it would be great if this conference could build on this. We need to rebuild the Women’s Liberation Movement in order to effect the societal change we need. However, we cannot build a movement if only those with the privilege of ready cash get to contribute. We should always be about accessibility and inclusiveness, after all we are organising around the very fact that patriarchal society is not inclusive of women, and actively excludes people on the basis of gender, class, race, sexuality, ability, age, etc.

The means must reflect the vision. How we organise must reflect the vision of what we’re fighting for, anything less is counter-revolutionary. That means that events must be accessible, affordable and always inclusive.

In relation to childcare at the wlm@40 conference

The original conference had a free crèche that was organised by men. This conference will have no childcare, but will instead offer parents or carers a list of registered local childminders with whom they can place their child, and presumably pay for this themselves.

One of the first four demands of the Women’s Liberation Movement, which, ironically, were formulated at the first Ruskin conference in 1970, was the demand for free 24 hour childcare, because feminists have always recognised that many women have always been unfairly excluded from much of mainstream life by their childcare and caring responsibilities. The demand for decent, free childcare for all has always been one of the basics of feminist activism. How can we demand this of society in general, if our own events are lacking in decent free childcare?
Women who are parents and carers are often in underpaid work, or are dependent on state benefits; the money we do have has to pay for our families, and not just ourselves.

The price of this conference will rule it out for many working-class and lower paid women, especially parents and carers, and the lack of free childcare is a double insult.

Because of the way this conference has been organised, most of us are not here, although we would very much like to be.
Will we be missed?
Radicalfeminists4wlmat40@hotmail.co.uk