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Q: How are parents and families being involved in informing the future service structure? A: To give existing and potential “customers” the chance to tell us their views in a structured way, we have recently contacted users and non-users of Children’s Centre services to invite their thoughts on existing services. You can see the surveys and responses so far on the “Your questions & feedback” page. The responses have been used to form the draft proposals on the restructure of services.
Families will also be invited to take part in the formal public consultation process that is currently being planned. To encourage a good response, we are planning to attend a selection of existing Children's Centre and community-run activities to seek a wide range of views from those already using Children's Centre services and those who are not.
Q: Who is involved in the consultation? A: The public consultation on the future of Children's Centres is open to staff, partners and the general public.
Q: What about the view of providers and partners? How are they being collected and used? A: We have carried out a number of surveys with Health Visitors, Early Years Providers and Childminders. You can see the surveys and responses so far on the “Your questions & feedback” page. The surveys will be used to help shape the draft proposals on the restructure of services and to suggest service improvements. They will be followed up with an invitation to take part in more formal consultation, later in the year. An initial meeting has taken place with existing providers of Children’s Centre services, and we will continue to meet with this group to make sure they are involved at each stage. We are also having ongoing discussions with Property Services, the Early Years Sufficiency Team, Libraries Service, Health and Schools to discuss potential future uses for Children’s Centre buildings. Q: Who will lead the formal public consultation and when will it happen? A: Formal public consultation is being led by Service Managers, with support from the corporate Change and Communications Teams. The formal consultation started on 2nd September and will end on the 28th October.
Q: How are staff going to be involved and updated about change? A: Key updates will be:
added to this website as soon as new information is available (at least fortnightly)
published in the monthly Service Newsletter, sent out through Cluster Managers by Mary Hellier
presented to SCC staff at Staff Awareness Sessions (August), Cluster Managers meetings, the new Continuous Improvement Team and Change Drop-in Sessions (Sept-Dec)
You may also be told about more individual changes by your line manager or Cluster Manager.
Q: What do staff do if we are contacted by the media? A: All media enquiries relating to changes to Children's Centre services, received by SCC staff, should be forwarded to the Corporate Communications Team (01823 355020), as per corporate policy. SCC staff should not attempt to answer media queries directly without seeking advice through this route. We want to ensure that the Council is able to respond to all enquiries consistently and fairly, and that we know about the media’s response to the messages we are sending out as this will help us to plan effectively.
Page updated 4/12/13
