Background Last year a consultation took place about the future of the Children’s Centre service delivery after March 2018 in Bromyard.

An overwhelming majority wanted us to remain delivering the service.

Service Changes You will notice with immediate effect and over the next 3 months, changes that will have to be made in order to deliver the service in accordance with the funding and contractual arrangements that the Council require. This will affect our universal services (groups, events) and also our individual support work with families. We have had to change the names of the groups we run and we are aware that there has been some negative feedback to this.

Current situation In order to move towards the changes the Hope Centre is expected to make the service has to move in line with what the Council intend to offer from October 2018. The Council has informed us that there will need to be reductions to services in Bromyard in order to align our delivery with other Children’s Centres in Herefordshire, and focus on specific targets. Originally it was hoped that the Council would make those decisions before March 2018 but this did not happen. We can confirm that we have received a revised contract to deliver until the end of September 2018 on new terms and conditions.

Hope centre services Our priority is, and always has been, all the families we work with and this will continue to be at the forefront of all the services here. However, as a result of the changes that are being made to Children’s Centres nationally and locally, we are obviously affected.

Future The future for Hope’s involvement in the delivery of this service however still remains uncertain.  We have worked very hard since the Consultation in the intervening months to convey the importance of maintaining a universal and targeted service in Bromyard to the Council and will continue to do so.

We are very grateful to everyone who has helped us to do this and for the ongoing support we receive. The Council are in the process of making decisions about the future delivery in Bromyard that will be in place in October in just over 3 months.  We will of course keep everyone updated as soon as we can and in the meantime….

Please support us We would like to encourage everyone who uses the centre to carry on coming and supporting us: let us know what matters to you and how you will be affected if there wasn’t a children’s centre service here in Bromyard for you to access. The Cabinet member for Children and Young People is visiting us in June and we will be informing her about our concerns about the reductions and the impact upon the families we work with. It is very helpful for us to know how you will be affected if you can’t access support or help immediately in Bromyard so please let us know.

If you would like any more information or have any questions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.