Evaluation of a child development centre in a rural area

In this article we discuss the setting up of a child development centre for children with a developmental delay in a rural market town away from a tertiary centre. The process was evaluated by a variety of methods including analysis of centre activity, preliminary questionnaires to parents at the end of their child’s assessment, reflections by the centre team and in the final year of the project, a survey of all parents who had used the service, professionals who worked in it and other agencies in the centre town and a comparison town. Parents and staff reported high levels of satisfaction in relation to multidisciplinary working, venue, communication, and a child/family friendly approach. Further work is needed in developing links with social services and the voluntary sector.