Pewsey Outreach Children's Centre Mission:
To ensure families living rurally with children under 5 gain access to information, advice and support which will help to improve the well-being of their children and family life.
What is a Sure Start Children's Centre?
Overview of the Children's Centre Initiative
Pewsey Children's Centre Local Forum
What is a Sure Start Children's Centre?
Sure Start Children's Centres are places where children under 5 years old and their families can receive joined-up services and information, and where they can obtain support from a range of different teams.
Sure Start Children's Centres are at the heart of the Government's strategy to deliver better outcomes for children and families, building on the lessons learned and the sucess of Sure Start local programmes to extend the benefits to mroe families.
Sure Start Children's Centres are a vital part of the Government's 10 year childcare strategy to enable all families with children to have access to an affordable, flexible, high-quality childcare place for their child.
Overview of the Government's Children's Centre Initiative
The government's children's centre initiative is part of the Sure Start programme. It is part of the 10 year childcare strategy and is based on the five outcomes of Every Child Matters: Change for Children programme.
Every Child Matters: Change for Children sets out the national framework for local change programmes to build services around the needs of children and young people. This is underpinned by the Children Act 2004.
The 5 outcomes of Every Child Matters: Change for Children are:
- Be Healthy
- Stay Safe
- Enjoy and Achieve
- Make a positive contribution
- Achieve economic wellbeing
The government's goals in the 10 year strategy are to ensure that every child has the best start in life and to give parents more choice about how to balance work and family life.
It is divided into 4 sections and is set out in stages:
- Choice and flexibilty: Parents have a greater choice about balancing work and family life.
- Availability: For all families with children up to 14 who need it, and affordable, flexible, high-quality childacre place that meets their circumstances.
- Quality: high-quality provision with a highly-skilled childcare and early years workforce.
- Affordability: families to be able to afford flexible, high-quality childcare that is appropriate for their needs.
To enable this to happen it is vital that a holistic approach is used and the emphasis is on the need for all statutory bodies and rpivate and voluntary agencies to work together to acheive these outcomes. In addition to this it will anable us to identify and address the needs of the Pewsey Community Area.
Children's Centres will be supporting families with children aged 0-5 years, as well as 'ante-natal' parents. There will also be links with Extended School services.
All children's centres need to deliver a 'core offer' of services. These services depend on whether the centre is designated as being in an area of 30% or 70% disadvantage.
The Pewsey Outreach Children's Centre is in a 70% designated area. This means we do not have to offer childcare, but will be signposting to local sessional and day-care providers. We will be expected to provide 'drop-in' sessions. Most of our work will be outreach to the wider community.
[Statement from Val plus referral forms]
Click here to link to the Every Child Matters Outcomes Framework.
Pewsey Children's Centre Local Forum
Voluntary Action Kennet has been commissioned by Wiltshire County Council to establish and manage the Outreach Children's Centre for Pewsey Community Area. We will be working under the rural model with special emphasis for taking out information to the 22 parishes that the community area covers.
In order to develop services, Voluntary Action Kennet will be seeking guidance from a steering group that represents the local community (both Pewsey and the wider area). This group needs to be made up of representatives of voluntary and statutory agencies, parents/carers, and the views of individual parents/carers will be sought through local consultation, monitoring and evaluation.
If you are interested in joining the steering group please do let us know.
Contact Ali Perry on 01672 564140.
