Manchester to replace children's centres with home visits
Joe Lepper
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
Manchester City Council is to replace its children's centres with an outreach service that will visit every child under three years old in their home.
The move is designed to reduce its early years spending from £29m to £7m and follows concerns from councillors that the council’s children’s centre services are being underused.
Launching a three-month consultation on the plans, Afzal Khan, the council’s executive member for children’s services, said: "We have much less money to spend and need to ensure that we target it most effectively, focusing on those who need support the most."
The citywide outreach service will be developed with local GPs, health visitors and midwives.
Latest council figures show that a third of families with children under the age of five visit the city’s children’s centres. But during a pilot in the Ardwick area of the outreach service eight out of 10 families were contacted.
The council also intends to withdraw from directly providing day care nursery places by April 2014.
The children’s centre buildings will remain open, but will be used for services for the whole community.
The council said that one in 10 daycare places is provided by children’s centres and it is expected that independent and school nurseries in the city will take these on.
A council statement said: "An independent assessment showed that there are many spare daycare places available across the city."
The changes will not affect the 15 hours' free daycare for all three- and four-year-olds and the council has said that "additional support" will be made available for the most vunerable and disadvantaged families with pre- school age children.
The consultation document states: "This support will include additional day care above the free 15 hours available for all three and four-year-olds. We want this approach to prevent problems in families." It adds that this extra day care will be "fair and affordable".
