Sure Start a policy success but has 'lost the babies', says founder Naomi Eisenstadt

Speaking at an Institute for Government event, Ms Eisenstadt described the genesis and growth of Sure Start, and said, ‘We were originally a minus nine months to plus four years programme. I used to say that when I went to DfE in 1999 they thought that children were born at five, when I left they thought that children were born at two…But we did lose the babies.’

This was partly down to the loss of involvement from the Department of Health in Sure Start – ‘health knows about babies’, Ms Eisenstadt said.

Former public health minister and founding Sure Start minister Tessa Jowell, agreed, saying, ‘Unless you focus on the babies, you won’t change their life chances.’ The original purpose of Sure Start was ‘intervention to support vulnerable, unconfident, too-young mothers and their babies in order to prevent the recreation of the circumstances that have shaped their lives…that’s the stage that Sure Start has got to revisit.’

The quality of staff was debated at the event by the panel, which also included former no 10 policy advisor Carey Oppenheimer and children’s centre locality manager Jan Casson. ‘We need to look at the quality of staff who work with young children,’ argued Ms Jowell. ‘Working for Sure Start is not a guarantee of quality.’

‘We need to say that investment in staff is about better, not about more,’ said Ms Eisenstadt. A lesson to be drawn from the establishment of Sure Start was that, 'We should have built in career development for programme managers.’

The political will behind Sure Start and its rapid expansion meant that ‘the infrastructure is fragile, but it will stick,’ claimed Ms Eisenstadt. However, she added that ‘the departure of the ringfence is the biggest threat to early years services.’

Ms Eisenstadt has written a book Providing a Sure Start: how government discovered early childhood about the development of the policy.