Nursery World - Report reveals benefits of Sure Start

After Sure Start Children’s Centres were found to significantly reduce hospitalisations for children in poorer areas and save the NHS millions of pounds, the research authors share their findings.

Benefits to children’s health

By Sarah Cattan, Gabriella Conti, Christine Farquharson and Rita Ginja

Sure Start brought together services, including education, childcare and support for parents wanting to work. But one of the main goals was improving health. Our research looks at the impacts that Sure Start had on children’s health during their primary school years from its start in 1999 and its peak in the late 2000s.

Big benefits for health

We find that Sure Start had big health benefits. Increasing children’s access to Sure Start by adding an extra centre per 1,000 under-fives (about its peak coverage in 2010) reduces hospitalisations at age 11 by 18 per cent of their pre-Sure Start level. That’s equivalent to preventing around 5,500 hospitalisations of 11-year-olds annually.

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