DEVON Social Services has given its assurance that assistance offered by the Open Door Family Centre in Okehampton will continue despite the centre being earmarked for closure in May.

Although social services has ended its contract with NCH Action for Children, which runs the centre at Tenby House, district manager Maggie Cartwright said this week there was no question that such things as the open access groups, clothes store, toy library and special needs groups would disappear.

'I would like to reassure everyone concerned that all those services currently provided at Tenby House continue to have the full support of Devon Social Services,' she said.

'The end of the contract has given us the opportunity to look closely at what works well at the centre and where services can be successfully developed.

'This means re-organising some services in a way that gives more people more opportunities.'

She said building work was underway at Tenby House and some of the current groups and services were already based outside the building.

'When the work is completed, we will look carefully at the possibility of re-using the centre as a base for some of the new services.'

Devon County councillor for Okehampton Coleen Herriman said people should not be afraid of change.

'All the time we are looking at new initiatives — it is not always about delivering the service in the same way,' she said.

'If anything we want to extend the facilities and end up with a better service at the end of the day.'

But Michael Jecks, of the family centre support group, said he still believed the decision to close the centre was purely financial.

'Social services has never bothered to find out how many people have been using the centre or how many facilities were run there. In the last six months of 1999 over 500 individuals used the centre.

'It appears that there were no investigations undertaken before the closure decision was taken,' he said.

'Until I see a report that shows social services had thought it through, I am not convinced that anyone spent anytime beforehand to find out what was going on at the family centre.'

He said the fact that no-one knew where the services were going to be provided was evidence of this.

West Devon and Torridge MP John Burnett is due to have a meeting with representatives from Devon County Council to find out what was wrong with the NCH contract which had provided an 'extremely good service for many years'.

'I want an explanation of why this contract was withdrawn,' he said.