Children's centres policies are produced in line with the Together 4 Children guidance and building on the policies that were used by the Sure Start Local Programmes. Children's centres set their own policies in line with recommendations. The Policy Team within Children Families and Education (CFE) have worked to draft a model policy set for children's centre managers to work with, amend and review as they see fit.

To develop a model policy set we have worked with a steering group of Children's Centre Managers from across the County. These will be issued by the end of November 2009 for Centre Managers to test with their centre users and staff, and we will then revise those in order to reissue an approved set by summer 2010. Some policies such as Health and Safety and Safeguarding are County wide policies applied across the board.

An equalities impact assessment is being conducted to cover the whole exercise and inform the revisions required following consultation.

Policies drafted for centre managers consideration to date: