NEARLY £600,000 is to be spent on supporting 700 children and their families in the area.
A children’s centre will be created at Casterton Business and Enterprise College by 2008 and will offer early learning and full day care provision for children under five for up to 10 hours a day, five days a week over 48 weeks of the year.
The mo
bile building will also host other services for families such as antenatal and family health and opportunities for parents and carers to link with Job Centre Plus.
It is part of a three-year programme for Rutland County Council that will see another centre created in Oakham and a mobile service created.
The council has been given a Government grant of £589,009 for the scheme.
Although there is a well established child care centre on the school site and two other independent child care providers, the council says other services in the area are patchy and some families travel into Lincolnshire for child care.
The Casterton ‘family’ with an estimated 700 children under five is made up of Casterton Business and Enterprise College, Cottesmore Primary School, St Nicholas Primary, Cottesmore, and Exton, Empingham, Ryhall, Ketton and Great Casterton primary schools.
The county council’s director of children’s services Carol Chambers told members of the authority’s cabinet the mobile building which would be used would have a long lifespan and was modelled on a facility at Brooke Hill School, Oakham.
The cabinet unanimously gave the project its approval.
The money for the centre must be used by March, 2008.
The Government is committed to delivering a Sure Start children’s centre in every community by 2010 and the Casterton area was selected as it is seen as the most in need.
