Let's widen debate

Steve Biddulph (Special Report, 9 March) is not the only person to raise legitimate questions about the wellbeing of the current generation of young children and the expansion of group childcare. I started my professional involvement with day nurseries in the mid-1970s and it was tough then to get people to recognise that any out-of-home childcare could be safe and maybe even positive for some children and families. Unfortunately, we seem now to have hurtled in the opposite direction, such that it is unacceptable in some quarters to state the realistic situation that the experience of young children in group...