Hundreds of worried parents have signed a petition to keep children’s centres open after OTS revealed council plans to close them down.
Currently, there are ten Children’s Centres in the Borough of Sefton, who provide much needed support for children and their parents.
Sefton want to merge them down to three, So, Formby and Southport, which presently have three children’s centres,will only be left with one.
Bootle will end up with two and Maghull and Aintree will lose out completely. The Council reckon they will save £900,000 on this proposal.
A petition has now been launched by worried mums and signed by hundreds of others to reverse the decision.
Local mum Amy Hughes said: “Southport children centre’s saves lives! Anybody can become vulnerable at any time in their life, childrens centres, family support workers and other professionals based at centres like Linaker are nothing less than real life superheroes!
“The community, the children, the parents and the professionals ALL need the local childrens centres!
“Stop tradgey happening and help save our local childrens centres!”
Meanwhile Sefton Council announced on their website a comment by Cllr John Joseph Kelly, Sefton Council’s Cabinet Member for Children, Schools and Safeguarding, defending the proposals saying: “It is imperative that children in Sefton have the best possible start in life and we want to make sure this happens.
“We also have a legal duty to ensure the sufficient provision of Children’s Centres to meet the support needs of all local parents and carers, prospective parents and children from 0-19.
“This will not change but we need to target services towards those that need them most and where they are needed most.
“Our communities have told us in the past of the need to co-locate and how we need to make services available to those most in need.”
To sign the petition visit https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/save-our-childrens-centre
OTS News on Social Media