PARENTS will benefit from the opening of the new child development centre at Le Rondin School. All routine three-and-a-half year developmental assessments will be carried out at the facility, which doubles as an assessment centre for children with special needs.

Previously they were assessed at Swissville or one of a number of other places.

‘It will mean that we get all the pluses of being in one place,’ said Health and Social Services’ disability and respite services manager Bev Clark at yesterday’s opening ceremony.

‘We’ve been waiting for a long time to all be cast together so it will be good for teamwork.’

The centre houses a consultant paediatrician, speech and language therapist, occupational therapist, physiotherapist, clinical psychologist, a liaison nurse and therapy assistant.

Ms Clark said that the team had existed for some time and that it had long been recognised that a dedicated centre would be beneficial for multi-disciplinary working with children with special needs.

She said many parents had also expressed a desire to have a ‘one-stop shop’, rather than seeing each professional individually in a different venue. She said the team was delighted that the centre was attached to Le Rondin.

Health runs the centre, but the Education Department managed and funded its construction.

Health minister Deputy Peter Roffey said the centre offered two main benefits.

The first was that the facility would allow it to carry out developmental checks on the whole population up to age three-and-a-half and that it also provided an excellent facility for assessments on children with special needs to be carried out

‘Having a central site where this can be carried out is great because they can work as a cohesive team. It is also great for families because instead of trooping around to different sites, they have a one stop shop which is very convenient,’ he said.

Education minister Martin Ozanne said the facility had been a vital one to build, even though it would have been unlikely that it would have been commissioned in the current economic climate.

‘We were operating the ‘assessments for’ primary age children at Mont Varouf, an old school which had far outlived its usefulness and in wooden buildings that were wholly inappropriate,’ said Deputy Ozanne.