A consortium of seven voluntary organisations, led by the National Children's Bureau (NCB), has been given Government funding of just under 500,000 to develop the project over the next three years.
Sally Whitaker, director of resources and marketing at the NCB, said, 'When NCB was established 40 years ago, its remit was to promote co-operation and co-ordination within the children's sector, and this project epitomises that philosophy. The Children's Centre project will tackle some of the problems charities today face, such as competition for resources and duplication of services, while ensuring that each partner is able to make its own unique contribution to the well-being of children and young people.'
The other charities taking part are ChildLine, Family Service Units, I CAN, which works with children who have speech and language difficulties, the Who Cares Trust, which campaigns for children living in residential and foster care, The Place 2 Be, which provides primary school children with emotional and therapeutic support, and the mental health charity YoungMinds. A number of other organisations support the project and may become involved in the future.
Dr Carole Easton, ChildLine chief executive, said, 'We'll be looking at ways to share information and resources and create imaginative cross-charity links which allow us to focus on those children who need us all most.'
Jolanta Lasota, I CAN director of marketing and fundraising, added, 'We're delighted to be involved and look forward to seeing how the project develops.'
There are plans for all of the partner organisations, with the exception of ChildLine, to share offices in the same building by 2006. The location has yet to be decided but the consortium is in talks with a specialist company called INTEGER, which designs 'green' sustainable buildings. ChildLine is to move to new premises later this year, bought with the aid of lottery money from the Community Fund.
In addition to developing new joint services with an emphasis on socially excluded children and young people, the partnership will also investigate ways of co-ordinating and combining current provision, including helplines and links to websites. There are also plans to explore ways of offering a comprehensive children's information service, and to develop a regional infrastructure to identify gaps in services and minimise duplication.
