When the Integrated Children's Centre (ICC) in New Tredegar opened its doors in October 2004, it breathed new life into a South Wales valley community devastated by industrial decline after the closure of local coalmines - and established a distinctive, less prescriptive model than its often target-driven counterparts in England.
Walk through the doors of the ICC and you instantly feel a sense of local ownership, pride and social renewal. It is bright, airy and spacious, and it ticks all the necessary boxes when it comes to providing a menu of childcare and family support services. Unlike centres in England, it has a commitment to open-access play.
There is a special vibrancy about The Children's Space, with every detail of the indoor facilities geared to fulfilling the centre's motto: Space to Dream, Space to Explore, Space to Discover.
The furniture is versatile, allowing staff to alter the layout not only to comply with regulations but also to modify areas such as the home corner, which has served variously as airport ticket office, train station and travel agency. While the centre is a hive of creative activity, the atmosphere is relaxed.
In the 'outside learning classroom', apart from the ubiquitous abundance of swings, climbing frames and other play equipment, there is a herb garden, a vegetable allotment, decking where the children can sit and listen to stories, a pergola with wind chimes, and a wildlife corner where they can enjoy bug hunting. The outdoor play area borders that of the school and is a major factor in helping children to acclimatise when they move up to primary level.
The commitment to open-access play has been taken forward with the recruitment of an Adventure Play Development Worker, and there has been consultation with local children, the after-school club and the school council. Last summer, outreach open-access opportunities using minimal resources and the natural environment were provided in various parts of the locality.
Andy Senior, children's partnership officer for Caerphilly County Borough Council, says that the process of involving children in creating adventure play facilities is 'as important as the end result'.
Nia Seaton, a researcher at the Institute of Wales who has conducted interviews and compiled a study of the centre's evolution, says that its child-centred ethos has already permeated the wider community.
Significantly, local people she surveyed about its perceived effectiveness did not single out any particular element of its provision, impressive though it all is, but stressed its potential for changing the life chances of local children.
Child-centred ethos
As soon as she came on board in July 2004, ICC co-ordinator Sarah Mutch, who has experience of integrating services in Norfolk, ensured the broadest possible community involvement.
While supported by Caerphilly Council, this was to be no 'top-down'
initiative from a local authority. The community was even consulted about the colours of walls and carpets and rallied round to help put the final touches to the centre in the hectic fortnight before it opened.
Ranked ninth in the league of most disadvantaged wards in Wales, the community had willingly latched on to the idea of creating an integrated centre as part of an 18.5m wider regeneration programme. This entailed building a new primary school, a police station, a healthy living centre and a resource centre housing a library, training room, state-of-the-art IT facilities and, soon, a cyber cafe.
The Children's Space was the first of an initial wave of 22 centres - one for each local authority in Wales - designated by the Welsh assembly government.
When the First Minister for Wales, Rhodri Morgan, opened the latest facility, the Ely and Caerau Children's Centre in Cardiff in February, he indicated that the first phase is on course, with 22 centres or satellite facilities now open and a further 12 to be unveiled in the next six months.
Support services
The New Tredegar centre, attached to the White Rose Primary School, was financed from a combination of 524,000 from the Big Lottery Fund and support from Cymorth, the funding stream developed by the Welsh Assembly Government to finance targeted support services for children and young people. It also benefited from additional support, as the area has a Communities First partnership in place, a vehicle for co-ordinating and funding regeneration work in the 100 most deprived areas of Wales.
The nursery class caters for 60 children over morning and afternoon sessions and is line-managed by the school. A voluntary management committee, with representation from parents and the community, manages the other childcare elements.
There is a parent and toddler group for 35 children, a 25-place wraparound service, an after-school club with plans to expand from 18 to 24 places, and a playgroup with between 12 and 18 places.
Each day some of the children receiving nursery education pop across the corridor into the wraparound care. When they reach school age they move down the corridor - the transition is seamless and, according to reports from reception class teachers, painless as children from the ICC have settled down quickly in school.
Sarah Mutch says the availability of nursery and then wraparound care enables parents to have time to themselves to think about taking up job opportunities or training - a key issue, as nearly 40 per cent of the adult population in the Caerphilly county borough area have no qualifications.
Dawn Meade, whose daughter Katie attended the parent and toddler group and is now in reception, has taken up the post of supernumerary in the centre.
She says, 'At first I just helped out. Then I realised this was something I wanted to do, and when the post came up I was very keen to take it on. I am starting my NVQ level 2 training at Easter.'
The parent and toddler 'Link-up Group' comes to the ICC twice a week. This and the thriving 'Come and Play group', which includes some Welsh language input, Language and Play, Bookstart and Creative Play, helps parents to develop positive interactions with the children and promote literacy and language development.
These groups have also proved to be useful for sign-posting parents to other services such as breast-feeding groups and there have been more informal sessions on healthy eating and motion and movement.
Building confidence
For Andy Senior, the central lesson is that 'multi-deprivation' requires 'multi-solutions' and the emphasis must be on building the confidence of parents, working with them rather than preaching at them.
Similarly, while the centre has a strategic objective to ensure the best start for children, it is not burdened as many centres in England are by arbitrary targets to create more childcare places, which have often seemed determined less by community need and more by the flourish of a ministerial pen.
In fact, the acute deprivation in the New Tredegar area has meant that there has not been much demand for full daycare services because parents cannot afford it. There is a tradition of using extended family as carers.
But childminder Julie Evans, who is part of the NCMA Children Come First Quality Assured Childminding Network, says the centre allows her to borrow some of its toys and equipment, ranging from large tents to jigsaw puzzles.
She attends the carer and toddler group three times a week with the two-and-a-half-year-old boy she minds.
As the services are grown organically according to the needs of the community and not through an imposed blueprint, the prospects for the long-term sustainability of the centre appear more assured. It was successful in securing some rate relief from the local council and has been imaginative in seeking out sources of funding from bodies such as the Wildlife Trust.
But it is the centre's status as a genuine hub for service provision, and its strong ties with the locality, which mark it out as an exemplary model for developing integration in tune with the community. Not surprisingly, other centres in Wales have viewed it as something of a prototype. Those preparing for the second wave of centres in England could also draw valuable lessons from its evolution. NW