Events put on by the school are usually during working hours, so I miss out and my son again feels disappointed I can't be there.It is unfair to force single mothers out to work by reducing their benefits and do not see how providing more after school clubs is going to improve things. They will have to be free and operate for longer hours and during school holidays.. Yes, that first cigarette of the day tastes wonderful - better than all the others which follow, in fact. But why? The usual explanation is that the pleasure comes from the rush of the nicotine - an addictive drug like cocaine or heroin - reaching a body which has been starved overnight.

That doesn't explain, though, why the others don't taste so good, yet seem as necessary. For a start teatime club has to be paid for if you are working (regardless of income). It operates for only two hours after school, so if you can't get home until 7pm further child care is needed. I thought that by returning to work I would be better off - financially, mentally and socially Also that my son would benefit from having a working mother I soon realised it wasn't that easy. Although my son went to a state nursery, he was considered too young for teatime club and therefore had to be looked after by a childminder.When at five he was finally old enough, I thought, "great, now we will be able to afford some of those little luxuries in life" Not so. Not wanting to be labelled as one of those single mothers who deliberately become pregnant in to obtain a council flat and sponge off the state, I decided to return to work when my son was three years old. I looked for work locally but couldn't find anything that paid a reasonable salary, so decided to go back to the City. The rest has come from the Department for Education and Employment (pounds 50m) and pounds 30m from the windfall tax..

Carmen Fielding, a single parent who wanted to return to work, found child care hard to find, expensive and inadequate. For funding they rely on parental fees (typically around pounds 15 per week), fundraising activities and grants from the local authority. Many clubs offer a holiday scheme as well (when fees are around pounds 40 a week) and some offer breakfast time, recognising that many people need to be in the office before school starts.Children have supervised activities which can range from games such as football to creative arts and crafts.The aim is to allow children to play in safety.Such clubs are governed by the 1989 Children's Act, which states that when children under eight are being looked after for more than two hours a day the staff must be registered with local social services and subject to police checks. For every eight children there must be one member of staff.It was also revealed yesterday the money for the clubs will come primarily from the lottery - pounds 220m out of pounds 300m. Rather they adapt to the community they exist in - whether a factory area in Manchester which copes with mothers working shift patterns, a deprived area of south London where parents are only charged pounds 1 a session, or an affluent middle class area where more is charged.After-school clubs are generally based in schools, community centres, youth clubs and church halls.