Analysis: Children's centres need time to bloom

An ambitious target of almost a decade ago was met last month when the 3,500th Children's Centre in England opened its doors, offering integrated support and care for all the under-fives and their families in the community. But a new report argues that it would be disastrous to expect this new centre to live up to the ambitions and promises of the programme within the current timeframe of two years.

The fifth report of the Children, Schools and Families Select Committee urges the Government to give the programme more time to take effect and prove what is known on the ground - that it is improving outcomes for young children.

The report, published last week examines the current state of the Children's Centre programme. The committee heard from 30 lead figures in the programme and consulted 73 pieces of written evidence from November to January.

The committee concluded that judging the worth of Children's Centres too soon, particularly within the current economic climate, would be 'catastrophic' and jeopardise the entire initiative.

Barry Sheerman MP, the committee chair, said, 'To put at risk the pioneering work of the last 12 years would be nothing short of disaster. The early years are when the greatest difference can be made to a child's life chances, and it is vital that investment in Children's Centres is allowed to bear fruit.'

Issues with the scheme include the variable levels of partnership working, unease about funding, and a lack of national evaluation. Yet many centres are fulfilling the original vision. Ofsted reported parent feedback of 'personalised, welcoming, friendly and non-stigmatising' and even 'life-changing'.

Rushed roll-out

While widely supporting the initiative, some in the early years sector fear the roll-out of Phase 2 and 3 centres has been rushed, at the expense of embedding quality services. Children's Centres are expected to provide the 'core offer' of integrated provision within two years of opening. Yet Phase 2 and 3 centres have been on average developed with a third of the money (£274,000) spent on Sure Start Local Programmes (SSLPs) in 1998 (£750,000). Professor Iram Siraj-Blatchford from the Institute of Education says 'many later centres are operating on a shoestring.'

Minister for Children, Young People and Families, Dawn Primarolo, says the Government's philosophy of 'progressive universalism' was the best policy for providing services to all, and the only way to guarantee targeting the country's 30 per cent most disadvantaged families.

Children's Centres were put on a statutory footing for the first time with the 2009 Apprenticeships, Schools, Children and Learning Act. Local authorities were able to centralise aims, philosophy and practice from 2006, when they were given ultimate control over the programme.

But Dr Margy Whalley, director of Pen Green Centre Research, told the select committee that this has led to an 'often overly bureaucratic control of Children's Centres'.

The swift roll-out of Phases 2 and 3 resulted in what some see as inferior consultation which left established community-run organisations feeling alienated. Many also say there have not been enough skilled staff to fill all the new positions.

Dr Whalley supports the report's assertion that children's centre workers must be funded for further training and qualifications. She told Nursery World, 'There's a huge acknowledgement that without quality early education and care, Children's Centres won't be able to make a difference. For that quality we must have a high number of qualified and highly trained practitioners.'

The committee's report notes, 'The involvement of early years qualified teachers is essential to the ambitions of Children's Centres to provide the highest quality early years experiences. We urge the Department to collect information as soon as possible about the number of qualified teachers employed in Children's Centres that offer integrated education and care, and the nature of their roles. It is essential that practice in Children's Centres reflects the lessons of the EPPE research; the requirement for early years qualified teacher posts should be increased to achieve this, if necessary.'

Dr Whalley agrees. 'We need much more than one qualified teacher in every Children's Centre, as there can be 850 children to reach in every community, and the centre may only reach 140 of those children. Therefore, they must influence other local provision in a positive way.'

The committee again urges patience, insisting that 'the network that is now in place must be considered work still in progress.'

John Harris from the Association of Directors of Children's Services said, 'Children's Centres, in my view, model the joined-up delivery of services for vulnerable children and families envisaged in Every Child Matters and the Children Act. They provide the most visible evidence of impact to date of ECM in action, particularly in targeting work with the most vulnerable children and families through universal services.'

The joined-up approach of integrated multi-agency teams is thought to stand a much better chance of identifying families that might slip through the nets of individual agencies. Those who are particularly hard to reach involve drug misuse or domestic violence, disabled children, travellers and those with English as an additional language.

However, Dawn Primarolo says that while centres must be holistic and provide the 'core offer', early education and care provision should have 'primacy'. She emphasises the difference between the early Sure Start Local Programmes and Children's Centres. The former focused on community, cohesion, reaching out; the latter on early years and child development.

Subsidising of childcare provision beyond the free entitlement is set to become a pressing issue. At present, half of all centres are funding childcare through the Sure Start, Early Years and Childcare Grant, while the Government insists these places should be self-financing. Sustaining Children's Centre provision in deprived areas is still problematic, as private and independent providers have found.

Patchy partnerships

Early years consultants Pauline Trudell and Barbara Riddell argue that the role of maintained nursery schools as exemplars of outstanding quality and sources of training and support is 'largely unexploited but crucial'. Partnership working with other organisations is another issue facing children's centres, where the committee report found success has been variable.

Links with Jobcentre Plus are part of the core offer, yet are best described as 'inconsistent'. Similarly, relationships between Children's Centres and primary schools vary in their extent and effectiveness, when ideally there should be a 'smooth transition'. Jobcentre Plus and Primary Care Trusts are expected to contribute resources to supplement the Sure Start, Early Years and Childcare Grant, but many do not.

It is hard to say how much money is going into children's centres. The main grant supports management, outreach, capital and qualified teacher costs, but health services and Jobcentre Plus are funded through the Department of Health (DoH) and Department of Work and Pensions (DWP).

The select committee said, 'The Government must make more effort to work out totality of funding supporting centres, including resources from the DoH and DWP. It is unacceptable that such basic information remains apparently unknown.'

Future Funding

Children's secretary Ed Balls told the committee that local authority funding for Children's Centres was included in the 75 per cent of Departmental budget that is protected from cuts until 2013. However, no information was provided about the Sure Start Grant after March 2011, when it is feared the ringfence around local authorities Children's Centre funding will be removed.

The committee's report strongly supports continued ringfencing. Dr Whalley agrees. 'The ringfencing is critical. And I think the committee are quite right to make "efficiency" and "effectiveness" their watchwords, as these will be the priorities for whoever is in power after the election. I rejoiced when they suggested keeping the ringfencing of Children's Centre money.

'Centres are extremely vulnerable during this time of change. Can you imagine ringfencing being removed for primary schools?'

Around 400 centres are run by voluntary sector groups, yet most Service Level Agreements between Children's Centres and delivery partners terminate in March 2011.

Barnardo's, which runs centres city-wide for Leicester City Council, reports a decrease in the number of centres put out to tender. Even then, most are only under a one-year contract - a strong indication that local authorities are worried about future funding.

Martin Narey, chief executive of the children's charity Barnardo's, says, 'The problem is there's not going to be any cash. We wouldn't be here giving evidence if Sure Start had yet proven its case. Much as I believe in it, we have more to do to prove the long-term efficacy of Sure Start.'

Case successes

Emma Knights, formerly joint chief executive of the Daycare Trust, voiced a concern of many stakeholders when she said, 'One worries that decisions are going to be made in the near future that don't necessarily wait for these evaluations.'

National evaluation has been slow to show any clear improvement of outcomes for children and families. A basic issue for Sure Start is that most centres cannot prove their effectiveness through concrete data, only individual cases. But the ultimate measure of success credited by the report is strong commitment in the sector itself.

Jan Casson, Children's Centre Locality Manager at Northumberland County Council, says, 'I can't even think of what it would be like to go back to pre-Sure Start times. The number of children we were seeing on a daily basis whom we were letting down doesn't even bear thinking about.'

FAILING HEALTH

The Department of Health's formal joint responsibility for the Sure Start programme ended in 2002.

The Audit Commission published a study of health services for under-fives in February 2010, concluding that spending in the previous decade had not produced widespread improvement in health outcomes. Obesity and dental health performance had actually worsened.

Lorriane Cartwright, Essex Area Manager, Ormiston Children and Families Trust, says, 'GPs just do not know about Children's Centres. Only recently, I spoke to 60 GPs and they did not know what centres did.'

The Pre-school Learning Alliance claims that 'building links with health teams has been piecemeal,' and 'attendance and representation is a struggle'. The Committee concludes, 'Government should lead from the front by establishing joint DCSF and DoH responsibility for Children's Centres.'

CHILDREN'S CENTRES TIMELINE

1998: First step towards a national programme as 250 Sure Start Local Programmes are planned

2004: First Children's Centre opened

2006: Childcare Act places a duty on local authorities, Jobcentre Plus and NHS bodies to provide integrated services

2009: Apprenticeships, Skills, Children & Learning Act passed

September 2009: 55 per cent of designated CCs delivering the core offer

October 2009: Over 3,100 CCs designated

March 2010: The 3,500th Children's Centre is opened

MORE INFORMATION

House of Commons, Children, Schools and Families Committee, Sure Start Children's Centres, Fifth Report of Session 2009-2010, vol 1 is available at www.parliament.uk/csf