A consultation on proposed changes to children's centres services will be launched later this month.

Shropshire Council is looking to reduce the number of buildings used from 26 to six - including The Centre in Oswestry. It would mean that services would no longer be provided from Woodside Primary School in Oswestry and Ellesmere Primary School.

Services would also be delivered through community venues and home visits under the new plans.

Following the backing of Cabinet on Wednesday the consultation is now set to launch on May 29 and will run for six weeks including a series of public meetings including Ellesmere Children's Centre on Monday, June 4 between 1.30pm and 2.30pm; Woodside Children's Centre in Oswestry on Wednesday, June 6 between 1.30pm and 2.30pm; and Baschurch Children's Centre on Thursday, June 21 between 10am and 11am.

People will also be able to complete an online version of the consultation questionnaire via the Shropshire Council website, or complete and return a hard copy.

Nick Bardsley, Shropshire Council’s Cabinet member for children’s services, said: “We want to provide support to children and families who are most in need of our help, quickly and in the right way. There are many families who receive support from a number of organisations to help with problems they are facing, but this support isn’t always coordinated in a way that makes sense to the family. This causes confusion and frustration for the family and it does not always enable things to improve quickly enough, or for those improvements to be sustained.

“This, together with the need to secure £875,000 savings, means that a change in approach is required. We currently spend an awful lot of money on a lot of building, some of which are only used for a very small part of the week. We think it’d far better to focus our resources on providing services for those who need our help, rather than paying for buildings.

“The proposed new delivery model for Early Help services across the county will provide whole family support, dealing with all the issues a family faces, with their full involvement and consent. The principle of delivering these services through bases or hubs was generally well received during the first consultation but now we want to know people’s views about these more detailed proposals, and about the proposed locations of the six hubs.”