IN response to Julie Dickens's letter (January 16) about Educational Maintenance Allowance (EMA) payments, I would like to say that as a disabled parent with my husband having to give up his business to care for me, obviously money is limited.

Due to this my son receives the full amount of EMA, being £30 per week. I would like to say that the EMA payments are anything from £10 per week to £30 per week depending on the family income.

The payments are also only paid into my son's bank account if he attends college - no attendance, no payment, full stop. So these payments are not a guaranteed money source.

Julie Dickens commented about this money being changed into vouchers for shops, bakeries and bus fares and the like, but these payments are to help the student with monies for books etc for their coursework.

I would like Julie to know that my son, too, has been raised to work for things he needs, and he has. He works long and hard, weekends and evenings at BhS, for money that he spends paying his bike insurance, petrol, phone bill and so on.

Not all young people on EMA are lazy layabouts who don't want to do anything. All families are different and are under different circumstances.

Therefore, it is not fair to tar others with the same brush, so to speak.

Mrs S Churchill,

White Rose Avenue,

New Earswick, York.

Updated: 11:58 Tuesday, January 24, 2006