A decision due to be made at the July Cabinet meeting on the model for future delivery of the Council’s Early Years and Children’s Centre Services has been deferred until September.
Early Years and Children’s Centre Services are being re-structured following the Council decision to reduce the budget in this service area as part of the local response to national public spending cuts.
It is planned that the re-structured service will continue to meet the needs of the same number of vulnerable families and children whilst the budget will have been reduced by £1.5m.
Extensive public and stakeholder consultation has been carried out on the proposed changes and the analysis of the responses is underway. It will be important for these to be properly considered by Cabinet in reaching any decisions.
Officers are looking at ways in which some of the specific issues highlighted by respondents might be addressed.
Alongside the consultation, the Council has also received a formal ‘Right to Provide’ request from Children’s Centre staff under the Localism Act, seeking to establish a staff mutual to deliver the Council-run Children’s Centres.
This request must be formally considered and responded to, if the Council decided to support such a development this would affect the timing of some of the proposed changes to the new model of delivery.
Cllr Dine Romero (Lib-Dem, Southdown), Cabinet Member for Early Years, Children and Youth said: “Postponing the decision on the new service model will allow sufficient time for both the public consultation responses and the ‘Right to Provide’ application to be properly considered and factored into the necessary decisions.
“Supporting the development of a staff mutual is an important decision and if we were to do this we need to understand how it would affect the roll-out of the new model and the operations of the other agencies we work with in delivering services.”
