Opinion: In my view - Good start to guidance
Peter Gerrard, head of East Staffordshire Children's Centre
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Those of us working in or from children's centres know that our ability to work effectively in partnership is critical to achieving integrated services.
Often we have superb health colleagues working alongside dedicated professionals in family support and early years. The new Government guidance, Maternity and Early Years: Making a good start to family life, recognises, however, that all too often, good quality work on the ground is still far from being structurally embedded in universal children's services and seeks to fill some gaps.
The guidance empowers families in a number of ways, with plans to offer more help to prepare for parenthood, and more maternity information, enabling families to make informed decisions about available resources and services. Both are ambitious but overdue.
Concise references to research in the guidance underpin the need to be the best we can be. In his recent Independent Review: Fair Society, Healthy Lives, Professor Sir Michael Marmot concluded that children's centres providing access to high-quality health reduce inequalities in early physical, emotional, cognitive, linguistic and social development. The National Evaluation of Sure Start reinforces evidence that parents in Sure Start areas have more positive parenting skills and better home learning environments for children.
The guidance also reiterates the importance of safeguarding children and the potential that information sharing has for preventing problems slipping through the net, as well as reaching the widest possible audience.
Children's Trust Boards are cited as crucibles in which silos can be 'blended' to achieve truly integrated, multi-agency, universal children's services. I hope this can be achieved. But while accountability rests mainly with local authorities as the lead/managing stakeholder and the only party that is legally accountable for outcomes, I fear that levels of obligation and commitment to the challenges of change and resource and information sharing will remain unbalanced.
Finally, I cannot fail to be impressed with the guidance for its practicality and empathy. It offers a sound, realistic range of strategies aimed at accelerating the improvement in integrated children's services which is necessary, and within our reach and duty.
