Agenda item

To consider the attached report on the consultation by Essex County Council on their Children’s Centres.

Attending the meeting to answer any questions will be Henrietta Barkham, the ECC Area Commissioner Early Years & Childcare and Stacy Randall, Spurgeon’s Regional Manager.

The Chairman welcomed Stav Yiannou the Essex County Council’s Lead Strategic Commissioner for Early Years Education and Learning and Stacy Randall, Spurgeon’s Regional Manager, accompanied by Gill Wallis, EFDC’s Community Development Officer.

Ms Wallis noted that Essex County Council was currently undertaking a formal consultation on the future provision of Children’s Centres in Essex which would end on 5 December 2013. The consultation was about the need to make £2.5m of savings from the Children Centre Budget from 2014/15.

The County Council’s Children’s Centres offered a wide range of services for families and others caring for children under five. Each Children’s Centre was different, offering a variety of services according to the needs of local families. Activities were delivered from either a main site, a delivery site, or through a range of outreach venues. All Children’s Centres work closely with health, schools, GPs and other local service providers.

Essex County Council had proposed that the Little Buddies Children’s Centre in Buckhurst Hill be closed and merged with the Sunrise Centre in Loughton. The reasons stated for this proposal were that “it is in an area of lesser deprivation compared to neighbouring Epping children’s centres; and they were trying to prioritise resources to areas of greater need.

The site suffers from accessibility issues as it is on a busy high street with limited parking. Neighbouring centres in Epping Forest are easier and safer to access. Good transport links between Buckhurst Hill and neighbouring centres in Loughton and Debden would also serve to minimise the effects of this closure.”

Officers had met with the Portfolio Holder and other members to discuss the issues and had prepared a draft council response.

The ECC officers acknowledged that the district of Epping had eight children centres and that they proposed that four main centres would remain. They would have outreach services, targeted one to one support in the home and on-site pre-school and nursery provision would continue to be delivered. As part of this provision they were proposing to close Little Buddies in Buckhurst Hill and merge it with the neighbouring Sunrise Children’s Centre, Alderton, which would continue as a Main Site.

A public speaker, Mr Neville, made a short statement about the location and ease of access of the Little Buddies centre in Buckhurst Hill. That it had a large catchment area and that many of these people were not well off, some of them could not afford the train and bus fares to travel to other centres and so would have to walk a long way to get there. This could be dangerous as they would have to cross busy main roads etc. He also noted that at present Little Buddies was oversubscribed. Also, travelling further may increase the use of cars in the area.

Councillor Girling commented that he thought that the consultation was kept under the radar, especially for parents and many head teachers of primary schools. They had no awareness of the consultation process. It seemed that only enough paper copies had been produced for about 3% of the people who needed it. Parents of children of primary age school children, who may have younger children, should be made aware of this consultation. Also there was no place in the consultation document for people to put their views down. It was only a tick box exercise.

The ECC officers acknowledged that further consultation would be undertaken by Spurgeon’s. They have also sent consultation documents to MPs and doctors etc. to enable it to cascade down. Spurgeon’s also have representatives on Primary Schools; they have noted that the preferred means of communication was by social media and to this end they have pages on Facebook etc. They noted that about 28% of responses came from West Essex.

Councillor Jacobs noted that his particular interest was in ‘Little Stars’, in Shelly. This centre had a large hinterland, but what were their operating hours at present. Stacy Randall said that they offered 10.5 hours at present, the rest were carried out in the community. They would review this. She understood when people said it was just a tick box exercise but they were still gathering data as it was not a done deal.

Councillor Chambers asked how many families used Buckhurst Hill’s Little Buddies. Ms Randall said that it was a struggle to get families to use these facilities, although there are people who use the facilities at libraries. Between July and September, 271 people had used Little Buddies, but people generally used other centres.

Councillor Murray noted that we were told that transport links between Buckhurst Hill and neighbouring centres were good, but he doubted that. They were also told that we should be pleased that the Little Oaks Children’s Centre is to have extended opening hours, but remembered when they were open longer, before any cuts in services. He had not heard anything other than this reorganisation was about saving money and he noted that officers were doing the best they could. He felt strongly about this as it affected people who were less well off. The Prime Minister had given a cast iron guarantee at election time that Children’s Centres would not be affected.

Ms Randall noted that they had relocated Little Oaks and it was doing well. Members were welcome to visit any children’s centre at any time.

Councillor Lion asked how were the centres used and which were the most popular ones. Ms Randall replied that they had that information but as it was such a lot of data it was difficult to present it all.

Councillor Girling said that there was a reason why the public could not understand the rational behind why the decisions were being made as there was no background data online. Ms Yiannou replied that there was a lot of data to put up so they tried to summarise. Councillor Girling  said it was good to hear that the Little Oaks centre was doing well, but their old site was left in disarray and their new site was off the beaten track and not easy to find. He understood that they needed to save money but their proposals were not easy to understand by the public.

A second Public speaker Mrs B Sultes said that she was a mother of two children. When she received the consultation she found that there was nowhere she could put her views in, just tick boxes. She lives in Buckhurst Hill but they were not affluent and they would struggle to go privately. She praised the centre there which helped her and her family when she had a vey sick child and helped her through a very difficult time.

Councillor Philip wanted to know about the overall proposals compared to the other proposals in West Essex. He was thinking about the number of centres proposed for the West of the county and how many children under 5 they would cater for. There appears to be significantly more children under 5 here than in other areas. Was there any justification for this? He was looking at how the burden was spread across the whole of Essex, as the three other areas had significantly fewer children under 5 (by percentage), than West Essex. Ms Yiannou replied that there were three areas that they considered, one was the indices of multiple deprivation; they looked at families living in these areas and the number of families suffering from deprivation as classed within the top 30% across the country. They used this data and the accessibility data. This area was more densely populated so there would be more children there. We also considered the number of families accessing services in order to put the proposal forward. Councillor Philip replied that it would have been useful to have these items put in the consultation documents, as it would have helped people to understand this better.

Councillor Jennie Hart commented that our response should be stronger. Central Government should be tackled for forcing local government to make cuts. First it was youth services and now children centres. She could not understand why the Buckhurst Hill Centre was being closed when it was well used. She had been a volunteer for Homestart, dealing with vulnerable families; they were now struggling to survive – why had they lost their funding? Ms Yiannou replied that money for children centres has not been cut from the Homestart budget.

Councillor Girling noted that they mentioned high deprivation areas, but Children Centres deal with more than just that. They target all sorts of problems and not just deprivation. Ms Yiannou replied that deprivation data gave them a lot of other information not just the formal deprivation data.

The Chairman thanked Stav Yiannou and Stacy Randall for attending the meeting, setting out the background to the consultation and answering member’s questions.

RESOLVED:

That the draft response to the consultation prepared by officers in consultation with members and the Portfolio Holder be agreed.