Sure Start: Sure Start: Liverpool City Council - battling to deal with an 11.5m funding shortfall

Liverpool City Council, which encompasses the highest levels of deprivation in England, has pledged to protect its most vulnerable residents as it copes with cuts of more than £140m over the next two years.

The city's children's services, including Sure Start children's centres, and services for vulnerable adults are being given priority over areas such as leisure and libraries in the balancing act of setting the budget.

Liverpool is losing £91m this year and £50m in 2012/13. According to its budget document, 'the council is the most deprived in England and Wales and has received the largest reduction in spending power of all local authorities in 2011/12'.

Despite the authority's pledge, there are concerns that many families will lose out. Initially Liverpool announced plans to close four of the city's children's centres, but after protests and lobbying they have been given a reprieve for a year.

'We have 26 children's centres,' says a city council spokesman. 'Twenty-two of them will remain open, although in some cases that will be with some of the services having been stripped out of them.'

The council reports that the other four - Church and Mossley Hill, Childwall and Woolton, Hunts Cross and West Derby - are in consultation with the staff and service users and other interested parties in their areas to see if they can come up with alternative plans. They are in wards with the least deprivation within the city.

'Basically, we are saying that if they come up with no proposals they will close,' the spokesman says. 'Whatever proposal does come forward has to be something sustainable.

'We have lost an awful lot of money in terms of the amount of funding now coming from the Early Intervention Grant. We have no choice in this policy, but we have tried to target our efforts.'

NEW CENTRE FACES AXE

The council is sustaining a shortfall of £11.5m in its funding for children's centres for the next year, but it has cushioned the blow by making real cuts of £2.5m this year. It is looking at further cuts of £6.9m in the children's centres budget next year.

'We have done that by pulling in funding from elsewhere,' says the spokesman. 'The council took the decision to protect services for vulnerable adults and children's services. Other services such as leisure and libraries have taken a bigger hit.'

While everyone agrees that the most disadvantaged, hard-to-reach families, in the most deprived areas, need the support of their local children's centres, there are concerns that families in the more affluent areas could lose out.

Anita Egan, co-ordinator of the Childwall and Woolton Children's Centre, says, 'The council priority is on the vulnerable, but as I said to the council at the budget-setting meeting, "how you define need is different for every parent of a newborn child".

'We have parents who are struggling with post-natal depression, professional women who find themselves isolated. The children I have on the child protection register are from homes where there is domestic violence and it is all very much behind closed doors.

'We have stressed parents who are facing losing their jobs, and having their homes repossessed. This is not the sort of community where everyone knows everyone's business. Here these things are more hidden, and in some ways that is more worrying.'

The purpose-built £1m centre was opened only last May, but it has already forged strong relationships in the community and is popular with local families.

'A consultation exercise is to start in September,' says Ms Egan. 'But ever since the reprieve was announced in March, we have been working on proposals and looking at ways in which we could become sustainable ourselves - maybe by developing new business models, or social enterprise opportunities.

'To be honest, it is too big a mountain to climb. You can't operate a new business sustainably from the day you open the doors. It takes time to be able to do that. We need a buffer - some kind of transition funding to see us through the next financial year.'

Ms Egan says the plan is to close three children's centres in south Liverpool, but she is concerned that there are more than 5,000 children in this catchment area.

'We are a phase three centre in a brand new, standalone building on the site of an infant and a junior school, but we don't have the headaches of centres attached to schools,' she says. 'We have fantastic resources, including a £10,000 sensory room that local private, voluntary and independent settings and schools all come to visit.

'We have a PVI pre-school here. There was an existing playgroup that had been going for 30 years operating out of a building which was in a poor condition so they moved in here but they do not generate the money to keep the building open.'

SUSTAINABILITY

Childwall and Woolton Children's Centre is not limited to term-time use. It is currently being used by the community across the whole year and in the evenings, with activities including well-attended Slimming World sessions, a zumba class and an adult reading group.

'I wanted to target older people in the community too, so they could be champions for us and fight for us,' says Ms Egan. 'We have been looking at all sorts of ways we could generate income. We surveyed our parents and at least 90 per cent said they would be prepared to pay a bit for activities such as baby massage or baby yoga. I totted it all up, but it would only come to about £20,000 and I have a wages bill of £180,000 to £190,000.'

She used the period between recruiting staff to the centre and its opening last May to invest in staff training so team members are qualified to lead sessions in stay and play, Jumping Jacks, Junior Chef, baby massage and baby yoga themselves, which saves on costs.

'We have looked at offering some adult learning - my background is social enterprise and also in training adults. We have been looking at how we can pool our skills to generate income.'

Ms Egan has also looked at the costings for options such as losing administrative staff or reducing to just three posts.

'Within our area there are 1,200 children. We have some of the biggest numbers of the 26 children's centres and in June we saw over 1,000 children through the doors here. Sometimes we have to turn people away from activity sessions because there is no room left at all.'

Ms Egan, who has just completed the National Professional Qualification in Integrated Centre Leadership, is determined that come what may, she will continue to develop the staff and the centre over the coming months.

'I have to keep the staff going. We have to keep delivering high quality services and we have to keep developing the business.

'We have parents here who are still coming in for active birth sessions and anteand post-natal clinics. Where are these families going to go if our doors close on 31 March next year? The neighbouring centres don't have the capacity.'

She says there is a slim chance the centre could avoid closure. 'Our parents are very articulate. They are doctors and lawyers and senior people who can put up a fight with words, so there is just a glimmer of hope.'