I write 'nursery school' and 'headteacher', but rather impressively the authority, governing body and community refer to the setting as a children's centre and the headteacher as a head of centre, despite being a state-funded nursery school and fully integrated into the educational establishment in the same way as any primary or secondary school.
This progressive attitude is because Rotherham has embraced, nurtured and developed a learning community approach which recognises, not just the critical contribution that children's centres make to school attainment, but also, the intrinsic cost-benefit and the unassailable value of embedding children's centres into the very core of those trusted establishments - namely, schools.
The result of Rotherham's rather progressive children's centre delivery model (currently being considered for tendering out for commissioning in 2014) is that families experience seamless service provision the across the whole 'core purpose' agenda. Thus, family learning and support services thrive and children also gain enormously from high-quality daycare complemented by seamless state-funded nursery 'school' provision in the same setting.
My early observation of the evidence suggests that children's emotional health and wellbeing alongside F1 attainment seem to be improving this year.
WHEN LOCAL NEEDS ARE IGNORED
However, other areas of the country are not faring so well, where the service commissioning process is disguising and sanctifying a crusade of cuts to some of the most vulnerable and poverty-stricken areas.
For me, the concern with some commissioning is that those being charged with saving vast swathes of public funds are, in too many cases, doing so in splendid and blinkered isolation. Cabinet members are tasking chief executives with wholesale cut agendas, who are in turn dictating to relatively new and often inexperienced commissioning teams to 'go forth and save big!'. Directors of Children's Services and Early Years are being bypassed for fear of their striving to protect probably the most significant development in education and social welfare since the creation of state education in 1944 - children's centres.
Commissioning teams are, by their very creation, assigned thick skins and an almost autonomous, unassailable power base. It can sometimes be beyond their pedigree and knowledge, which usually originates from perfectly respectable pathways such as accounting, procurement or administration. Quite understandable, yes, except they do not always grasp the complexities and challenges of working in truly disadvantaged communities. They live to deliver savings and can quickly see formulas and methods of achieving thrift, but propose processes which are often rushed and unrealistic.
UNDERMINING CO-OPERATION
Those dealing with such emotive decisions can potentially eliminate or radically rationalise (cut) whole services, irreversibly. As such, there is a perception of mistrust and a threat to services and livelihoods which undermines co-operation. The length of time in which the local authority thinks a service can be established can be unrealistic. I have experienced one local authority issuing a requirement of existing children's centre providers to deliver a whole local authority needs-analysis and full community consultation within a turnaround time of a few weeks, ready for an equally short tender specification design and implementation period. They were even kind enough to write (and steer) the questionnaire for consulting parents, which extolled the virtues of commissioning out children's centres over existing local authority provision, as it would be cost-effective and seamless.
Well-managed commissioning has an important place in the future of public services, and ignoring this fact or seeking to undermine it isn't entirely helpful. But if we are considering this approach as feasible and inevitable, it must be implemented with openness, phenomenal skill and attention to detail. It must also be very receptive of the views of local people and existing experience on the ground, scrutinising need, the impact of existing services, and real costs, together with understanding that commissioning is not the solution to all public service fiscal challenges.
