The appalling state of Children's Centres

[Pumkinpiecrazy]

My niece is due to have a baby next month. I offered to take her to Baby Weigh at the Children's centre in the early weeks. I said I'd have a look and find where her local Children's centre was.

I'm really appaled at the state of the service now. When mine were little we had multiple groups per day at our local centre, courses, groups for school children in the holidays, I know they did a lot of outreach too.

Baby weigh is now by appointment once a month at the library. The local centre has a couple of drop in sessions per week for older babies/toddlers. There is a baby group but realistically too far away for her to access.

It's such a shame. In my time we had a world class service to massively benefit children. I remember the figures on how breast feeding had increased in our area due to the fantastic support group. But the Tories have destroyed it all.

Is it the same in your area?
Am I being unreasonable that this is a very sad state of affairs.

I think I loved baby weigh a bit too much with my first! I went weekly for the first 3 months and then monthly until he was 1!

https://healthmedia.blog.gov.uk/2024/05/02/start-for-life-and-family-hubs-everything-you-need-to-know/#:~:text=The%20Family%20Hubs%20and%20Start%20for%20Life%20programme%20builds%20on,for%20Life%20offer%20for%20babies.

this is what we have! Hopefully more roll out soon

It was never obligatory. My eldest is mid 30s but after first few weeks I didn't bother. Youngest I didn't take at all (21)

Dgc never been taken once HV signed them off at 10 days

Aren't they just in deprived areas? One of myDDs asked about them. But apparently she is in An ok Postcode so doesn't qualufy

Where i live there are drop in baby weigh clinics every week day (at a couple of different children's centres each day). It does sound like a post code lottery!
Also lots of other baby groups have scales for you to use yourself which can be reassuring between official weigh ins with the health visitors.

Wasn't sure start wheni had eldest 2. With 3rd had to travel out of area to attend anything so didn't really bother

Labour have been in power for well over a year. Presumably they have already reinstated them or at least have plans to?

Yep - Best Start.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/giving-every-child-the-best-start-in-life/giving-every-child-the-best-start-in-life#:~:text=We%20will%20take%20the%20best,and%20a%20digital%20parenting%20offer.

Interesting!

Where has that money all gone??

The funding for Surestart was cut under David Cameron, it was a disgraceful, short sighted move. In my local area we fought to keep ours open, and kind of won, but then it got run down to a tiny skeleton service over time. We'd had an amazing team of staff who made sure they included everyone who came to sessions, and offered all sorts of activities for parents and children, sessions for child minders, help with return to work, parenting courses, and really valuable targeted work with families with serious challenges. We had a thriving friends of/parent forum. We've got a Family Hub now, but it is nothing like what we did have.

The children’s centres and Sure Start were all being dismantled by the Tories when I had DD thirteen years ago - what had been a great resource was completely cut and in our area ceased to exist completely. There was still a HV and a baby clinic each week at my GP practice when DD was born, but shortly afterwards this was cut and moved five miles away and the HV service was massively reduced. I’m not sure it even exists at all in my area any more, which is pretty shocking.

We’ve kind of forgotten all the things we had as public snd community services even a very short time ago, and then we wonder why everyone is so depressed and angry at the dilapidated, rootless Britain we currently live in. Even fifteen years ago things were really different.

My eldest is only mid teens but there was loads about including weekly baby weigh in clinics when he was little. I was quite isolated so I used them to do something along with sure start centres.

I suppose it may not have been a great use of resources in some ways but keeping me sane and not using the NHS in any other way may have saved money in other ways.

I help run a once a week free baby group which a charity pay for. It’s definitely welcomed by many and we “help” just by listening and offering a cup of tea.

Although I’m in a relatively well off area, not everyone has endless funds to pay for private baby groups nor loads of friends in the same boat. It’s very isolating for mothers now which I can lead to other issues. It’s very sad.

We have family hubs and we’re in a really leafy area. I work in them sometimes, they are really busy places with loads going on.

Austerity, profiteering, bureaucracy, propping up property prices and Tory businesses, Brexit, etc. etc.

It went into the private investments of Tory cronies, private healthcare and social care companies which siphoned off large amounts of public services, private profits for contractors taking on outsourced services, and so on. Remember things like the PPE contracts scandals where private companies run by Tory mates got awarded chunks of money to “provide” services that didn’t ever happen? Stuff like that has been happening more and more since 2010. The Tories spent tons of cash on privatising bits of public services, propping up the housing market with schemes like Help to Buy, and so on and so on. And huge amounts of public sector cash and resources since 2016 have gone into “delivering Brexit”.

I think it depends where you are in the country. In my area there are still children’s centres. There’s a few close to me and they all have weekly weighing drop ins, breastfeeding drop ins, baby groups for pre-walkers and toddlers, groups for SEN children and their families and groups for young mothers too. All free. I was in maternity leave a year ago and did a mix of the free baby group and paid ones.

No, I live in a wealthy area in the south east, we have children’s centres.

I was never able to use the children's centres because our area, though in a deprived northern town was not deemed to be deprived enough.
The trouble was because the centres existed they were the only things running baby and toddler groups in our town so I was terribly isolated.
I feel a bit bah humbug about the whole thing as it was a horrible lonely time and I didn't really manage to meet anyone else with babies to form friendships with until my eldest was 1.

I'm in a London borough and the Children's Centres are pretty good here, although not as good as 20+ years ago. There are 5 centres in the borough and there are 10-15 sessions running on every weekday across all of them (for different needs/ages). Sessions for breastfeeding, under 1s, under 2s, under 5s, SEND. So on any weekday there will be a session suitable for your child nearby. Plus there are one o' clock clubs, libraries and a ton of lower cost groups, and lots of paid groups and classes, soft play, toddler sessions at museums etc. I never ran out of places to go with my baby!

At my GP surgery there was a weekly session for baby weighing, but I found it a hassle and just used my own scales at home most of the time.

I'm in a fairly affluent town in SE and was neve a Sure Start here nor any family hubs Other towns used to have all these facilities but not us We only had unaffordable private things for kids

You can thank the Tories for decimating these.

Baby weigh-on in my area have stopped since COVID. We had our eldest in 2021 and I remember my midwife saying they had been stopped with lockdown and should restart by the time by baby was born, but they never did.

They changed for appointments only I think, but also there wasn't a huge demand for it from parents.

It’s so sad that these aren’t available in the same way as 20 years ago. I found them invaluable. There were 4 in my city that I could easily access.
I met friends, accessed services and could chat to someone when needed. They also gave us things to do, when your day with a toddler and a baby is long!!
It was short sighted of the last government to not see (or care) about their value.

Well over a year!!!

Joker

You think the running down of public services can be fixed in 'well over a year'

It takes decades of committment, cultural change and money to undo each round of Tory decimation of our public services.

More or less yes, the LA was selected based on deprivation levels, although there were some additional LA's who qualified through other vulnerabilities.

https://www.local.gov.uk/sites/default/files/documents/Family%20Hubs%20Funding%20Explained.pdf