Pat Maher with his eight-year-old son Patrick, who is partially deaf and has ADHD, and staff from the Hilldrop Play Project

PARENTS have warned that the closure of a playgroup in Tufnell Park will leave vulnerable children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), and their parents, without support.

The Hilldrop Play Project, based in the Hilldrop Community Centre, will close today (Friday) despite community efforts to keep it open. A petition to save the group gathered more than 500 signatures.

The playgroup provides affordable after-school and half-term care for local children, with specialist provision available for those with extra needs. The community centre said that a lack of attending children meant that continuing to run the group became financially unviable.

Pat Maher’s eight-year-old son Patrick, who is partially deaf, has ADHD, and is being assessed for autism, has been going to the group after school three times a week, which has helped his father manage his care responsibilities.

Mr Maher said that, along with other affected parents, he had done “everything he could” to try and prevent Hilldrop’s closure.

He said: “Now that Hilldrop is going, there’s nowhere appropriate in the area for Patrick to go. As a single parent I can’t afford a childminder, and a mainstream care provider might not be able to cope with Patrick’s needs.

“Dealing with his needs on my own has been tough, tougher than I’d ever imagined. It’s only due to the incredible support of the staff at Hilldrop that I’ve been able to cope and help get Patrick and myself the support we need. It’s a massive loss to the community.

“I think a lot more people are going to miss out. I just know there are other parents out there, with children with special needs, who will be pulling their hair out over the lack of available support for these children.”

An overhaul of the SEND system was tabled by the government in February, and aims to integrate more children with special needs into mainstream environments.

Reflecting on the current educational landscape for SEND children, Mr Maher said: “I think it’s actually getting worse across the country for children with SEND. There’s more and more children being thrown into the system without the necessary care to support them. On the NHS, you have to wait three or four years to get a diagnosis, and without the diagnosis you can’t access those specialist services that you need. I feel like these children get forgotten about.”

Rebecca Taylor, whose son also attends the playgroup, said that the closure was a “real shame” and would leave a “gap” in the community for childcare.

She told the Tribune: “The staff at Hilldrop are brilliant and flexible, and the service is so accommodating for lots of different children. It’s great for children to be in an environment where there are kids with different needs to them. It’s a real shame that the staff there will lose their jobs.

“From my perspective, they’ve not been allowed to try everything to keep it going. Once the decision had been made it seemed final, and that’s a real pity. There’s still a real need for the service and now it’s being shut down.”

The Tribune approached staff from the playgroup, but was informed they had been instructed not to speak to the media on the closure of the playgroup.

In response, Stephen Moore, the chair of the Hilldrop Community Centre, said: “The trustees very much regret that it has been necessary to close the Play Project. They are aware that the project has been popular with parents and children and that families have relied on it for after-school and holiday childcare.

“However, since Tufnell Park Primary started its own after-school club in 2024 and further expanded it in 2025, the numbers of children attending the Hilldrop club have fallen to a level where the Play Project is no longer financially viable.

“Despite continued efforts during the last two years to boost the number of children attending the after-school club and to control costs, the project has continued to lose money. These losses have jeopardised the finances of the Hilldrop to the point where the trustees saw no alternative to closure.

“The Hilldrop project has been particularly good at working with special needs children (SEND). However, SEND children already receive support at their schools and it is to be hoped that the schools will fill any gap left by the closure of the Hilldrop Play Project.”