ABSTRACT
The Pen Green Centre is a multidisciplinary service for under-fives and their families where nursery education, day care, family work and community health services are all on offer. It is located in the Midlands, in Corby, a small town (population 50,000) in Northamptonshire. It was a steel town in the 1930s with a teeming population of steelworkers who had come down from Scotland and across from Central Europe to find work. By the 1980s when the Pen Green Centre opened, the steelworks had closed, the housing estates were boarded up, shops were barricaded with wire grilles and 45 per cent of the male population was unemployed. Poor nutrition, inadequate housing and high infant mortality rates were all major factors influencing the lives of young families. There were minimal statutory services for parents and young children and few traditional voluntary services for families in need of support.
