A NATIONAL children's charity which runs an activity club for children with special needs in Tavistock and Okehampton has been given three months notice to find alternative funding after it became the latest victim of Social Services cuts.

The National Children's Home (NCH) Action for Children hopes it will be successful in bidding for money from the Government's Children's Fund to continue running the Saturday clubs at the Alexander Centre in Tavistock and Tenby House in Okehampton.

Devon County Council will terminate its contract with the NCH in April as part of measures to cut £4.5 million from its social services budget over the next two years.

Supervisor of the team of 12 who staff the once-a-month service Mark Tucker said he was reasonably confident that the money could be found from elsewhere.

'We have a three-month window to look for alternative funding partners and we are looking principally at the new Children's Fund,' he said.

'The only thing is that the money will not be for continuing existing work — the Government has put together this fund to develop new work so we will have to have a radical rethink of the activities we provide for the children.'

Mr Tucker said the service would look at working with individual children to access mainstream leisure services in Tavistock and Okehampton and possibly Exeter and Plymouth.

'We will be looking at providing the sort of activities you would expect young people to be doing at a weekend like playing football,' he said.

The Saturday clubs have been running in Tavistock since the end of the 1980s and in Okehampton for the past five years. The scheme costs £31,000 a year.

'I am hoping that it will be a seamless transfer between the two funding schemes,' added Mr Tucker.

A spokesman for Devon County Council Social Services said the authority was working with NCH to identify alternative funding.

'The Children's Fund is education money and there is a lot of it — quite a lot of which is earmarked for West Devon,' he said. 'Budget pressures mean we cannot renew the contract in April but it is not all bad because it may just mean a switch of funding schemes, although we appreciate it causes concern to staff and parents.'