Breakfast, after-school clubs, and holiday programmes should be available in all schools, alongside family support workers, to provide safe places for children to play and learn, and to provide childcare needed to help working parents, it says.
It also claims that family hubs – of which there are currently 400 sites in the country – which it dubs the Government’s ‘alternative Sure Start’, will take more than 30 years to reach all the areas of disadvantage that Sure Start would have reached.
Between 2010 and 2022 Funding for Sure Start decreased by over two-thirds and over 1,340 centres closed.
This happened alongside a 49 per cent cut in council spending on early intervention services for children between 2010/11 and 2017/8. At the same time, total expenditure on late interventions like youth justice, safeguarding and child protection, and looked-after children, has risen by 47 per cent.
It argues that nobody needs to reinvent the wheel: policies such as Sure Start Children’s Centres, Every Child Matters, Extended Schools, and Family Hubs already provide principles for what works and what has been less successful, and can be applied in a new and creative way to meet children’s and families’ needs today.
It makes the case for schools and educational settings to be at the heart of connected and co-delivered services for children and families, highlighting that schools are 'trusted anchor institutions' that families often turn to for help.
The report authors say that schools are well-situated physical locations and a consistent point of contact for children, and well-positioned to act as hubs where services, the community, and a range of organisations including charities, local organisations, and business can be brought together.
However, schools cannot be expected to provide these services within their current budgets, and the report recommends ring-fencing funding for schools so they can access and provide the programmes, activities, and services that meet the needs of local children and families.
It calls for a national network of ‘hubs’ in educational settings that can provide services such as:
- School breakfast clubs
- After school and holiday provision to help with childcare
- Access to family support and advice
- Support for children with early years development
- Access to mental health support for children and young people
- Help for children with long-term health conditions
- Access to youth workers and social workers
The report is the fourth in a series of Child of the North/Centre for Young Lives reports to be published this year, focusing on how both the Government and Opposition can 'reset their vision for children', to put the life chances of young people at the heart of policy making and delivery.
The latest report also calls for joined up support around schools to boost school readiness, reduce absenteeism and tackle the impact of poverty.
It says the days of some schools sitting in isolation from the rest of the community, shut up for the holidays and focused almost exclusively on exam results, should become a thing of the past.
It says there are already innovative approaches being adopted which show how ‘outside school-gate services’, such as dental care, mental health services, and youth work can be brought inside educational settings.
It includes a wide range of examples of schools that are already connecting the wider community and specialist services, which it says are case studies for such an approach.
One of these is St Edmund's Nursery School in Bradford, which it says has a long tradition of supporting families' wider health and care needs. This includes providing a base for community midwives and perinatal support for new and expectant mothers, as well as working with Bradford's portage team, a home-visiting educational service for pre-school children with SEND and their families.
St Edmund's Nursery and Children's Centre in Bradford is one of the Department for Education's Stronger Practice Hub leads.
The report has been produced by eight research intensive universities in the North of England – the N8 Research Partnership – in collaboration with a wider academic community (the N8+) as part of the Child of the North initiative, and the new Centre for Young Lives think tank, founded in January by former Children’s Commissioner Anne Longfield.
Roadmap
In the foreword to the report, Longfield and Camilla Kingdon, former president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, write, ‘We have an opportunity to deliver all that is good about Sure Start in a new and creative way – in partnership with schools and nurseries and health service providers. This report sets out the case and a roadmap for a new infrastructure of joined up support for children and families – a new Sure Start for a new era.’
The new research follows renewed interest in Sure Start, after a report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies found that children who lived near to a Sure Start centre did better in their GCSEs, than those who didn’t, particularly in disadvantaged areas.
In response, former Labour ministers, including former prime minister Gordon Brown, have called for a Labour Government to bring back Sure Start.
Brown and three former Labour education secretaries have urged Keir Starmer to make a new Sure Start a focus of his election manifesto.
Labour has so far committed to providing breakfast clubs and mental health support teams in schools, as well funding new youth hubs as part of its plans to tackle serious violence.
Longfield said, ‘The dismantling and hollowing out of Sure Start since 2010, alongside the big cuts in early intervention funding, was a historic mistake and incredibly short-sighted. As the recent report by the Institute of Fiscal Studies shows, Sure Start was making a significant difference to the educational outcomes of some of the most disadvantaged children, as well as improving health outcomes. While many Family Hubs are doing good things, the network just does not begin to match the scale and scope of Sure Start.
‘We cannot turn back time and, with little new money available to rebuild an infrastructure of this scale and impact from scratch, we need to look for new and creative ways to deliver more joined-up support for vulnerable families as their children grow up.’
Kingdon said, ‘We aren’t trying to bring back the past, despite many child health professionals knowing that Sure Start had a huge impact on many children and families. What this is, is a brave re-imagining of how a new version of Sure Start might look and how it could make a seismic impact on children’s lives. Nurseries and schools are a hugely under-utilised resource and the recommendations of this report allow us to realise the huge potential of the education system to be an anchor for creating a solid foundation for the health and wellbeing of our children.’
Paul Whiteman, general secretary at school leaders’ union NAHT, said there was strong evidence that Sure Start had a positive impact on the lives of children and families and the decision to effectively scrap the programme was a huge mistake.
The Government’s new family hubs ‘while welcome, do not come near to replicating the Sure Start network which has been gradually dismantled over the last decade.
‘Many schools already offer services like breakfast clubs, and we welcome this report’s recognition that any major extension of such provision will require additional investment and support for schools because it would not be sustainable to expect existing staff to do more.
‘A revitalised Sure Start style programme could help ensure children and families get the support they need early on, setting them up to go on and be successful in school.’
- Building the foundations of a new ‘Sure Start’: An evidence-based plan for connecting and coordinating support and services in and around education settings is available here
