£¼m Grant For Children’s Wellbeing Centres

A £250,000 grant from NHS Northwest will help ensure that a full range of health and emotional wellbeing services are available in children’s centres and other community settings in West Cumbria.

The funding has been given to Cumbria County Council and will be used for buildings and equipment for the second phase of children’s centres in the area that will be operational from 2008.

Children’s centres include facilities such as Howgill, in Whitehaven. But no decisions have yet been made about specific centres which will get the money.

Some of the money – around £60,000 – has also been given to the Cumbria Partnership NHS Trust to help provide more accessible and family friendly mental health facilities for children and young people in Whitehaven.

The Trust is currently replacing or improving outdated facilities at the West Cumberland Hospital.

Jonathan Comber, young people’s services operations manager for the Cumbria Partnership NHS Trust, said: “In the same way that health staff will be working more from children’s centres and extended schools across West Cumbria, we are looking forward to staff from our other partnerships making use of our new facilities.”