Jamie’s Farm deputy chief executive Jake Curtis warned that blanket guidance against schools taking pupils on overnight stays means vulnerable children are missing out on therapeutic experiences. He said it was “unfair” that they are not able to go while children from wealthy backgrounds are able to enjoy family holidays abroad.
“Every wealthy family can go across the country or abroad on holiday. But I have groups of children in care having to cancel because they can’t come to a farm down the road. It doesn’t seem fair,” he said.
The charity normally takes hundreds of London children each year for week-long breaks at residential farms in Bath, Hereford, Monmouth and Lewes. It also runs a city farm near Waterloo.
The children, who suffer from mental health problems or are at risk of exclusion from school, spend a week doing manual work with no phones and use the experience to reset their lives.
Mr Curtis said schools are now unable to send children to them because government coronavirus guidance advises against overnight stays. He said children on residential trips are in groups of no more than 10, and stay in their own private rooms or in tents, and all the activities are done outside.
“They will be safer than they would be at home. “We know the Government has to be careful and these are difficult decisions, but it feels like they are blunt and careless and the people losing out are those people who rely on the state.”
Describing the work Jamie’s Farm does, Mr Curtis said: “We get the children out of their comfort zones. We give them a proper diet and we give them jobs to get stuck in to — mucking the pigs out, delivering baby lambs.
"It allows kids to feel proud of what they are achieving, and they don’t often get that sense of achievement.”
A spokeswoman for the Department for Education said: “We are advising against domestic trips for children under 18 in line with Public Health England advice.”
