Welcome to our 2015/16 annual report…
2014/15 was a chaotic year with the bid for the Sure Start Children’s Centres contract and then after winning it undertaking a major staff restructure and implementing a hefty cuts package. Therefore 2015/16 has been less stressful with the opportunity to really focus on the quality of the service we deliver. The achievements detailed in this report will hopefully give the reader a good picture of our work with children and families across North and East Halifax and the Lower Valley. In 2015/16, at Board level, we set up a Children’s Centre Sub Group which has been meeting monthly to maintain a closer overview of the service and support the Service Manager. Also we created two new posts of Senior Children’s Centre Manager and Funding/Project Worker to strengthen our management structure and to seek additional funding.
Our Ovenden and Mixenden Initiative team (OMI) has continued to develop strong partnerships with our public sector partners and local community groups. Work to tackle youth anti social behaviour in Ovenden has been a good example of this. I am always impressed when we receive progress reports at the Board at just how many projects and activities such a relatively small team get involved in. The second year of Staying Well has delivered lots of individual success stories and we hope it will be funded long into the future. We were delighted to be asked by the Council to help develop Staying Well in Elland and so alongside the Sure Start team we are establishing good links and a strong presence in the Lower Valley. Regular readers of the Friday Flyer will be pleased to hear that last year we also launched a Friday Flyer for the Lower Valley.
I would take this opportunity to thank all our staff for their excellent work and my thanks also go to colleagues on the Board.
Sarah Bedford, Chair