DEMONSTRATORS took to the streets on Saturday to dissuade councillors from cutting back children’s and parents’ services.

Kirklees Council plans to scale down its Sure Start Children’s Centre services at 17 of the 32 centres across the borough to save £1.5m in the latest round of council cuts.

The centres, which provide a variety of services for parents and pre-school children, will be split into 17 ‘associate’ centres and 15 ‘lead’ centres.

Services at associate centres will be scaled back while lead centres will be expected to take up the slack.

For example, the Sure Start centre at Almondbury will become an associate centre with many of its services transferred to Newsome.

Kirklees Council Cabinet members are expected to decide whether to pass the plan at the end of February.

But the Save Our Sure Starts (SOSS) campaign, which comprises parents and union members, gathered thousands of signatures for their petition against the proposal, at a demonstration on King Street, on Saturday.

The group believes the cuts will leave vulnerable parents and children isolated and the remaining services overstretched.

The consultation, which was conducted by a private company, was dismissed as an ‘expensive sham’, partly because users were not asked if they would like to keep full services at all Sure Start centres.

SOSS chair Gemma Wilson, a Marsden mum-of-two, said: “It’s going to have a massive impact. The economy is bad and parents can’t afford to replace these free services with private services.

“If parents don’t have their own transport it’s going to be hard to get the advice they used to get on tap.

“Sure Start centres have been considered like a Swiss Army knife and now it’s going to have most of its tools removed.”

SOSS secretary Danni Jones, a mum-of-three from Newsome, added: “When I first went to Sure Start I was isolated and depressed and I had no confidence.

“Now I’ve got through a degree, I’ve got much better confidence and I’m even helping support Sure Start.”

Sure Start children’s centres were set up by the Labour government in 1998 to offer a range of support to parents and pre-school children, including health visitors, breastfeeding support groups, childcare, early learning and advice to parents on healthy eating and managing money.