Nursery World - Services fail to reach many

Sure Start services are still failing to reach the most disadvantaged and socially excluded families, according to new research.

The latest findings from the National Evaluation of Sure Start into the effectiveness of Sure Start Local Programmes hold important lessons for successful children's centres, the study says. The study team was set up in 2004 and this is the final report on two years' work.

Many fathers, working parents and black and minority ethnic families are not using services, it says.

Reasons given by non-users surveyed include perceptions that services are 'for women', while other non-users were hostile to professionals 'interfering' in their lives. Some thought the services were stigmatised as for 'needy' families, and some that they were for cliques of 'better off' families.'

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