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My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds.

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In this week's analysis, Fran Abrams looks at Shoreark Children's Centres. The government

says it wants to keep them, but should it?

As a isolated parent suffering from depression in a way I interacted and played with

Billy Moore when I was in the children's centre than I possibly did at home.

I became less isolated and I think I became a

certainly definitely a better mother. Ruth Walsh is a single mother with a two-year-old.

She's campaigning against a council plan to withdraw funding from

local Sure Start centres. She says without these centres parents like her will just

go under and once you've met her it's pretty hard to argue with her.

It would be a crime to lose it. I think without that, I was heading for a very, very dark place

and I'm not sure that I would even still be here to be quite

honest. I certainly wouldn't be the mother I am for Billy. The aim was not

primarily to improve things for parents.

I mean that's a desirable aim, but it was set up to improve the outcomes for children.

And that's what one needs to be seeing as the main thing to be

...