DENYING mothers the chance to regularly attend baby and toddler groups offered at children’s centres would cause untold problems, a family fears.

Mother Kinga Hofman said the potential cut backs proposed by Brighton and Hove City Council are “terrifying” and would mainly affect first-time mothers and families who are new to the area.

The 35-year-old interior architect moved to Brighton five years ago and now lives with her son Frank and partner Wojtek Balawajder off Western Road.

She has joined a group of parents, known as the Brighton Children's Centres Campaign, and has backed The Argus Save Our Centres campaign in opposition to the threat of cuts.

If nearly £800,000 of cuts to the 2015/16 children’s centres budget are given the go ahead at a meeting next Thursday it could be one of a number of measures introduced to save money.

Ms Hofman visits the Cornerstone Children's Centre in Church Road, and Tarner Children’s Centre in Ivory Place. She is particularly worried about plans to introduce time limits and restrictions on the amount of groups families can attend if they are not branded as “high need” by the council.

She said: “My baby is 21-months-old now and I would not say I know everything there is to know about parenting. People need to be able to attend the groups for more than eight weeks. What happens if one week you can’t attend because the child is ill, you could miss one of your sessions.

“If I have a second child I would be slightly more prepared now but it is still a tough thing for any parent.

“Thinking that if I have another child these facilities may not be available to them is very upsetting and they are especially important for first-time mothers.

“The rest of our family is in Poland so we don’t have a wider support network here and I really found these centres and services were a life saver.”