A few days late, but a Happy New Year to one and all.
Paces opened for 2011 today. The long Christmas and New Year break has given time for rest, reflection and renewal. Actually, with the heavy snow that covered South Yorkshire in the last week of November, then the World Congress in early December, with just a few days remaining on my return before the Christmas closure, gave me personally a much needed extended break.
On a strong recommendation from someone who was no supporter of New Labour, I had Father Christmas bring me Tony Blair's book "A Journey" which I spent part of my break reading. It was as fascinating a read as I was led to believe; not so much for the politics as for the insight it offers into a leader's mind and thinking and into the nature of leadership itself.
Refreshed, then, I come back to Paces energised for the opportunities I see ahead in 2011. How can that be, surrounded on all sides by threats of "cuts"? I see that in the New Year's Honours, Stephen Bubb, CEO of ACEVO, got a knighthood and his very first blog post of 2011 reports the honour and an interview for The Times (£) in which he proposes a charity tax on bankers. In the course of The Times interview, he is quoted as saying "if charities are hit today, the old and disabled will pay tomorrow ". In the 13 years since Paces moved into what became Paces Campus in 1997, the year of Tony Blair's and New Labour's first election victory, and for several years before that, we have operated, grown and established ourselves in adverse circumstances; in an environment that has been indifferent at best and hostile at worst, to innovation in the education and upbringing of children with cerebral palsy that we seek to exemplify. We have done so without the benefit of large hand-outs of public money. The discipline of managing our slender financial resources has been demanding and instructive. In short, I do not recall any time in the past 13 years being anything other than difficult. I cannot therefore persuade myself that "the cuts" are anything other than a different kind of difficulty, to be managed and the way forward discovered.
Reasons for optimism? Ian Birrell, formerly of The Independent and a the father of a child with profound disabilities wrote a thought-provoking piece in the Financial Times on 28th December. (You can access this article by registering for free; otherwise £). If disabled children and their parents are to be served, which is what Paces is here for, then people like me who are charged with the task, need to be focusing, not on 'the cuts' but, as Ian does, but creating and uncovering the opportunities and the ways through.
We shall see.
