Capacity, a public interest body for children's services, analysed four high-achieving children's centres and found that they were focusing on tackling poverty as the main cause of poor health and under-achievement.
The children's centres were also offering a much broader range of activities than currently required by the Government, and were using parents and other local people to forge strong community links.
Margaret Lochrie, director of Capacity, said, 'You can't improve outcomes in the long term for children unless you support parents in reaching a better lifestyle. The children's centres need to support fundamental changes to family life. If family life is dominated by a lack of aspiration, high-quality nursery education is unlikely to be able to counter this.'
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