What is a Children's Centre?

  • Children’s Centres aim to support and meet the needs of children and their families living in the local area.
  • For Mereside Children’s Centre this covers the Clifton Ward and part of Marton Ward. The particular part of Blackpool that we work with is called our “reach”
  • We work very closely with Mereside Primary School as we are part of the school. We also meet families that use Stanley School and Baines but may live in our “reach” area as they are nearby. We want make sure families feel supported in the community in which they live, especially at times of need.
  • Some activities are available for families with older children, up to 12 years of age as we provide lots of activities in the school holidays, Saturday mornings and in the evenings.
  • We would like your ideas about what you and other parents would like us to offer. We call this consultation are always looking for your feedback on what we offer so that we know we are making sure we listen to your ideas
  • A key partner in the community is health; this could mean your Health Visitor or your Midwife. We also work with Speech and Language services to help your child to communicate more effectively
You can speak with the Parent’s Forum which is a group of people whose children access the Children's Centre services. They work together to find out what they want be meeting regularly and talking about and feeding back to the Children's Centre. If you want to be a part of the Forum please ask at reception.
Meet new people and share ideas and news in a relaxed and informal setting. We run friendly and relaxed groups where your child can:
Your child can become more independent and you both can make friends. Enjoy playing and learning new skills. Feel that if any of your family needs some extra support we can offer it. We have a Family Engagement Worker who can come to visit your home if you wish to assess what help is needed.
We provide a range of information and support for families:
- Accessing groups/services/courses
- Housing Issues
- Benefits Advice
- Support/represent families with appointments
- Help with completing forms and applications
- We can assess families’ needs to refer to other services such as Family Support
We do with by working with our partner agencies such as health, housing, benefits advisors. We call this multi-agency working.
If you need our help or support, please do not hesitate to ring or call in and see us. We can usually help, or we know someone who can!
 

Our Health Visitor and Midwife can provide…

  • Information and advice on all aspects of care before and after the birth of your baby
  • Advice on all aspects of baby and childcare in our groups or at your home.
  • Other services include breastfeeding advice and support, help to stop smoking, contraceptive advice, dietary advice etc…just ask!
  • Numeracy &Literacy
  • Budgeting
  • Parenting
  • Baby Massage
  • Career planning
  • Job seeking board, CV writing and interview skills
  • Basic Food Hygiene
  • First aid
We are always adding new courses… please talk to us if you have any ideas for courses we may be able to offer.