BECKY Willis (Letters, August 6) is right to fear that life is about to get harder for families with young children. However, for some that hardship is already very much here.

I have been struck this summer by the hugely different experiences of Oxford children during the long summer holidays.

While for some (including my own grandchildren), there have been seaside holidays, trips to the theatre and cinema, to games cafes, a wildlife park and the swimming pool, I am only too aware that there are other families for whom all this is completely unaffordable.

These families’ budgets are exhausted by the costs of holiday child care, or of providing an extra meal each day due to the absence of free school meals, while also having to save to buy uniforms for the start of the new term.

Needless to say, all these problems will have been worse for single parents. Far from heading to the seaside, some Oxford children will have hardly left the estate where they live. These hugely differing experiences will have impacts in the future. Sadly, we now have children being raised in poverty in the midst of this prosperous and historic city and having an impoverished experience of life in consequence of this.

Margaret Wareing
Oxford Road
Littlemore