Travel arrangements, council budgets and access to services were among the concerns raised during a public meeting on controversial cuts to the county’s children’s centres yesterday evening (November 12).

Dozens of people gathered at Bucks New University in High Wycombe to quiz council chiefs on the latest set of proposals to overhaul the Early Help service – which provides support for struggling families.

Bucks County Council (BCC) has laid out three options for families - keeping the current system as it is- with a 30-35 per cent reduction in services - replacing children’s centres with 14 family centres or close all children’s centres “in favour of a fully targeted outreach service”.

Wycombe District councillor for Micklefield, Andrea Baughan, raised concerns parents would be forced to attend a less convenient centre with limited parking and easily accessible bus routes under the new plans.

She said: “What I don’t understand is the logic of how my residents in my ward will now have their nearest centre as Hamilton Road, where parking is limited.

“I haven’t worked out the bus route yet as it baffled me. How are my parents going to get there?

“Whether they have got kids, babies, whether they are going to weighing clinics? I don’t see the logic of it.”

Campaigner and parish councillor, Linda Derrick, asked why the millions-of-pounds expected to be saved by launching a single-unitary authority in Bucks are not being ploughed into keeping hold of the current children’s centres.

She said: “Unification itself should save £18 million a year, so there is money available. So there must be a choice between what that money actually goes to.

“So what is happening is the choice is being made to cut services for children and young people, and not cut services for something else.

“The district councils are awash with money, and that is why BCC wanted to go to a unitary authority and the district councils didn’t.

“There is money there available, so why not use it for children’s centres and youth services?”

BCC has been working on an overhaul of the service for more than a year – in a desperate bid to save £3.1 million in the face of increasingly overstretched budgets.

Initial talks were abandoned in March, after families and campaigners raised concerns over the quality of the investigation.

Under new plans three of the centres would be classed as “family centres plus”, which would provide extra services where families can drop-in to access support five-days a week.

However during last night’s meeting residents raised concerns not having a regular “open access” service would mean less families would feel comfortable approaching the centres for help.

Head of Early Help at BCC, Gareth Morgan, said the council needs to push forward with plans as the current Early Help service “isn’t working”.

He said there has been a 160 per cent increase for child protection cases in the county as well as a 14 per cent increase in “looked after” children.

Mr Morgan said: “One of the main drivers for this is what we are doing currently isn’t working.

“There is a lot of evidence that suggests both locally and nationally that the way we currently deal with our Early Help services is not effective in terms of helping families that need it most.

“Critically, what we also found is the way we are working with and supporting families with children, we are not doing that early enough.

“That is most starkly laid out by the increase in figures in children’s social care. Over the last five years there has been a 53 per cent increase of cases of children in need.

“There has been a 160 per cent increase in the number of child protection cases for children in Bucks and a 14 per cent increase in children looked after in care of the local authority.

“The fundamental purpose of Early Help is to prevent that from happening.”

The consultation is due to run until December 13. Access the online survey at www.buckscc.gov.uk/earlyhelp.