Minutes:
(Verbal Report by Mrs R Turner, Managing Director)
(Mrs R Turner was accompanied by Mrs H Robinson, Children’s Centre Coordinator for Gravesham and Mrs K Bennett, Project Assistant, Central children’s Centre Team to answer questions for this item)
(1) The Chairman welcomed Mrs Turner to the meeting and asked her to introduce the item. Mrs Turner advised that there were currently 72 Children’s Centres in Kent and their role included; to provide for all children and families, early education, child care, parent support and advice, a link to Job Centres Plus, the Centres were key to their communities and pulled in all the Partners of the Kent Children’s Trust. The Children’s Centres would act as a test to the Kent’s Children’s Trust arrangements. She felt that if the commissioning arrangements were right between all the various Partners there would be good services delivered. The National Programme of Children Centres was due to role out at the end March 2011. Rounds 1 and 2 Capital Programmes were already allocated and underway and currently the Directorate was dealing with Round 3 of the Review. A report on Round 3, due to timing, was to be submitted to the CFE: Resource and Infrastructure Policy Overview and Scrutiny Committee (POSC) on 19 November 2009.
(2) The Chairman referred to what she wished to cover in Item B6 on the agenda and suggested that Members of the Committee act as rapporteurs making visits to the Children’s Centres across the County perhaps in pairs to help inform and fulfil the scrutiny role in the Review. Mrs Turner added that after the visits Members might wish to have a report to look at how the outcomes were recorded.
(3) Mrs Turner then introduced Mrs Robinson and Mrs Bennett to the Committee who could offer Members their views of working for the Children’s Centres. Mrs Bennett commented that the Children’s Centres would welcome visits from Members. She suggested that It would be difficult to give a Kent overview as all Children’s Centres were different as some had evolved from old Sure Start programmes and were in a different place to others, visits would give Members a flavour of the many Centres.
(4) Mrs Bennett advised that the ‘Together for Children’ team who were from the Department of Children Schools and Families, who monitored the of the Children’s Centres had to cover up to 800 children under 5 years old in one area, it was not expected that all parents could go to one site. In the rural areas the services had been taken out to parents by using Local Primary Schools, Health Centres, Village Halls and Community Centres. Kent had been doing well with this; three examples from Kent had been put on the ‘Together for Children’ website. Mrs Robinson added that the development of Children’s Centres in rural areas had been a challenge. She gave the example of Gravesham, where a van had been purchased to get the services out to the communities, she suggested that this should not be building focused but about service delivery.
(5) Mr Smith felt that the work on Children’s Centres should be attributed to one of the 3 Children, Families and Education Policy Overview Scrutiny Committees (CFE: POSCs) and the lead Committee should inform and involve the other two Committees. All three CFE: POSCs needed to inform one another of their agendas. He added that there was a connection with this agenda Item and agreed Select Committee on Extended Schools. In response Mrs Hohler advised that the Round 3 report was going to the Resources and Infrastructure POSC due to timing and the report was based on resource issues. She was keen for the CFE POSCs not to work in silos and this was overcome through the updates at the beginning of the meetings.
(6) Mrs Robinson advised that work was being been carried out on pathfinding work on Extended Services around the County particularly were the Children’s Centres were on school sites.
(7) RESOLVED that the Members comments and suggestions and the verbal report be noted.