250 Children's centres to close!! Ridiculous!

After much speculation a new survey has revealed the true scale of potential closures and cuts to Sure Start Children’s Centres. Children's Centre managers were asked what they were expecting in terms of budgets and how their centres would be affected over the coming year.

250 (7%) centres look set to close within the year. 3,100 (86%) will have a reduced budget, 2000 (56%) will be forced to scale down the services they offer and 1000 (28%) centres will have to issue ‘risk of redundancy notices’ to their staff. The cuts and closures means that 60,000 families will be affected.

The survey was carried out by 4Children and Daycare Trust to provide the first set of national data on the real impact that cuts will have upon the centres and the families that use them. The charities are calling for Local Authorities to take action and prioritise funding for Children’s Centres.

Here are the links to the campaign pages and information please can you circualte as widely as possible?

This is the link to the database
http://www.netmums.com/coffeehouse/real-parenting-revolution-641/real-parents-campaign-save-childrens-centres-717/527623-your-local-childrens-centre-risk-cuts-even-closure.html

Netmums are keem to help local parents and other activists in a variety of ways - we'll get behind your campaign, help you promote it and provide a range of tools to help you spread the word to as many people as possible. Our toolkit in the link below explains this in more detail. If the links don't work just paste into your browser.

Here is the link http://www.netmums.com/campaigns/Save_Our_Children_s_Centres_SOCC_.5782/ to the toolkit to encourage local parents to get active, Netmums are happy to support them with this and encourage them to post on their local Netmums home page on the Noticeboard so other parents can get active. The campaign pages explain all this clearly

Here is the thread http://www.netmums.com/coffeehouse/real-parenting-revolution-641/real-parents-campaign-save-childrens-centres-717/525734-250-children-s-centres-close-within-year.html with the discussion from parents about children's centres.




With each swipe of the 'cuts' young families seem to be hit from every direction. I am aware we all have our part to play in them but SURELY by reducing the help and support for young families we are going to creat a minefield of problems in the future which will then take more money to 'fix'. Prevention is always better than cure.

I know from the workshops and training I have delivered in Children's Centres of the excellent work that they do and having a place and people to turn to is literally a lifeline for many. 


Elaine Hanzak
www.hanzak.com