The councils - Leeds, Somerset, and the London boroughs of Camden and Newham - have been awarded Beacon Council status by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minster and the Improvement and Development Agency.
Thirty-eight local authorities applied under the category Early Years and Childcare: the Sure Start Agenda, and the winners were assessed on their 'active policies for joining up services for children and their plans to mainstream the Sure Start agenda across their authority'.
The advisory panel commended Leeds City Council for its clear vision and commitment to the Sure Start agenda. The council has six integrated children's centres that combine early education, childcare, family support, including health and social care, and training.
Leeds plans to open 13 more centres by March 2006, and has further 'ambitious plans' to develop integrated services by dividing the authority into five areas and using Sure Start children's centres to link all providers. Leeds council head of early years services Sally Threlfall said this approach was 'helping us to support parents making choices and improving life chances for their families'.
Somerset County Council was praised for its innovative practice and its consultation and partnership arrangements were hailed as 'excellent'. The advisory panel was particularly impressed with its methods of reaching out to isolated rural communities. The council has also developed links with a property group to identify spare capacity on school sites, which can be used for mainstreaming Sure Start.
Camden Council was the first local authority to make a commitment to offering Sure Start support to all families of under-fours in the borough.
It is rolling out Sure Start local programmes and developing 12 Sure Start children's centres.
Part of its planning involves reshaping its early years services in line with the Sure Start principles and realigning its boundaries with those of National Health Service Primary Care Trusts to ensure that services are easier to mainstream - a move that the Beacon Advisory Panel described as 'innovative'.
Newham intends to mainstream Sure Start children's centres across the borough through its Early Start initiative. The advisory panel said early years services were 'well embedded into wider agendas such as regeneration'.
Councillor Quintin Peppiatt, chair of Newham Early Years Development and Childcare Partnership, said the award was 'a great tribute to all the work of staff and councillors in helping to create more than 3,500 childcare places in Newham in the past four years'.
