An initiative to help young children cope with family breakdown is heavily in demand 16 years after it began.

Keighley and Bingley Soroptimists International launched the Aire Valley child contact centres to help keep youngsters in touch with parents who do not live with them.

Prue Bray, administrator of the scheme, said the 12 volunteers who started the first centre, in Keighley, were still involved with the service.

She said demand was now higher than when the initiative was established, adding that families referred to the two centres must sometimes join a waiting list.

She said: “We put the welfare of the child before any family baggage that may have gone on before.”

The contact centres — one hosted by Keighley’s Low Fold Children and Family Centre, the other by Shipley’s Owlet Children and Family Centre — mainly provide safe and secure environments in which children can spend time with a separated parent. Mrs Bray said the scheme could also help the children build relationships with other relatives, such as grandparents.

It caters for children from only a few months old, to seven and eight year olds.

The Keighley wing of the operation was set up in 1993 and now runs for two hours each Saturday morning at Low Fold, in Exley Head. The project expanded to its second base in Shipley five years later.