CHILDREN in a York suburb will benefit from a £90,000 boost for their local Children’s Centre thanks to an idea for New York.

It follows a City of York Council bid for Government funding to trial a new Children’s Centre model at Haxby Road Children's Centre based at Haxby Road Academy where Zoe Lightfoot is head teacher.

The pilot-scheme will see support services offered to not just local children, but to their families and the wider community as well.

The model is based on a successful American scheme – the Harlem Children’s Zone – which supports the theory that the needs of the local community and local children are inseparable.

The trial will see the centre get a cafe so parents can link up with each other, as well as with childcare and health professionals, more easily.

The new-look centre will focus on specialised speech and language education for pre-school children to try to narrow the skills gap between children from the most deprived backgrounds and their peers when starting school.

Local people will also be able to help shape the services that are offered through the centre and adult learning courses will also be available through a partnership with the Centre for Lifelong Learning.

Cllr Janet Looker, City of York Council's cabinet member for education, said: “We know that the educational attainment gap between some of our most disadvantaged children and their peers is already significant by the time they are four years old. We hope that by using a holistic approach to support the wider community, we can tackle some of the inherent issues that hamper educational attainment and future life chances.”

Alice Beckwith, from the council's children’s services department, said: “Although the pilot will be based at Haxby Road Children’s Centre, one of the strengths of the model is its flexibility, and we will be looking at how we might adapt it to fit the needs of other communities across the city.”

There are currently nine children's centres at schools across York and they offer services to all children under the age of five and their families across the city.

They are: Hob Moor Children’s Centre, Westfield Children’s Centre, Carr Children’s Centre, Clifton Children’s Centre, Haxby Road Children’s Centre, The Family Tree at New Earswick, The Avenues Children’s Centre, St Lawrence’s Children’s Centre, Knavesmire Children's Centre.

Last month The Press reported that Cllr Looker said, that changes might have to be made to children's centres and cuts had already been made to the service by reducing opening hours at some centres, making them satellites of larger centres under a group manager.

She said further squeezes to budgets mean that head teachers will be consulted about the sort of changes that need to be made.