Conclusions and recommendations
1. Although most Phase 1 centres were based
on existing Sure Start or other programmes, only three-quarters
of the target number in the sample examined by the National Audit
Office were in operation by March 2006.
The Phase 2 target is especially challenging because most centres
are starting from scratch, and local authorities have continuing
responsibility for the centres established under Phase 1. The
Department should ask each local authority involved in Phase 1,
2 or both to assess and report on its capability to meet its target
for establishing new centres, while also improving their management
and delivery of services in existing centres. Where a local authority
has gaps in capability that may jeopardise its management of the
children's centre programme, the Department should consider mitigating
actions, such as re-profiling the area's programme to give the
authority time to develop capability and consolidate existing
centres before new centres are created.
2. The rapid increase in children's centres
creates a risk that the focus on improving services for disadvantaged
families will be lost. While the earliest
centres were based in deprived areas, the guarantee of a centre
for every community means that resources will have to be spread
more thinly. Local authorities should distribute resources so
that disadvantaged families continue to be a priority.
3. Only a third of the 134 staff working children's
centres whom the National Audit Office interviewed felt well qualified
to perform their roles. There is a risk
that the number of people being trained under the Department's
early years professional scheme will not meet the demand for planned
new centres over the next 2 to 3 years, especially given the requirements
of the range of other organisations in the early years sector
in which newly trained staff can also choose to work. The Department
should ask local authorities to evidence their commitments to
the development of existing staff and, through the Learning and
Skills Council, it should assess the requirement for new training
places for potential childcare workers.
4. Disadvantaged families often rely on services
provided by a range of different providers, and these can be more
accessible and effective if available through a single children's
centre. Getting people from different
organisations to collaborate effectively is a major challenge
for centre managers and they need practical advice. Good collaborative
practices include using early contacts by health staff to help
identify families who need most support, and outreach to break
down barriers for hard to reach groups. The Department should
facilitate dissemination of such practices, for example through
a web-based tool for sharing experiences.
5. Most children's centres are not doing enough
to reach the most disadvantaged families. Only
one third of the centres visited by the National Audit Office
had proactively sought out hard to reach families. Parents felt
centres were less good at meeting the needs of groups such as
fathers and some minority ethnic communities, while some did not
use centres because of preconceptions about who the types of people
they were intended to serve. Centres should adopt the kinds of
strategies outlined in the National Audit Office's report to identify
disadvantaged families and communities, develop effective outreach
with community and voluntary organisations, and provide a welcoming
environment in the centre and services to support their children's
development that users will value and want to use. Centres should
seek help from national and local voluntary groups that have expertise
in reaching disadvantaged families and gaining their trust.
6. Running a children's centre requires a
wide range of skills, including business management, financial
management and skills in managing diverse relationships.
Many children's centre managers would benefit from having more
support; for example, except in some centres based on former Sure
Start Local Programmes, centre managers received little financial
management support. Local authorities should facilitate centres
in collaborating to buy in expertise or use existing shared services.
Local authorities also should provide earlier indicative budgets
so that centres can produce timely financial plans for the coming
year.
7. Neither children's centres nor local authorities
have good information on what individual children's centre services
should cost, leading to a risk that funds are not being deployed
cost-effectively or to areas of greatest need. Neither
the Department's evaluation of Sure Start nor the local monitoring
done to date gives enough evidence on whether the £2.1 billion
spent from April 1997 to March 2006 has been cost-effective.
Indeed, the Accounting Officer could not provide this expenditure
figure at the Committee's hearing. We expect Accounting Officer's
to have such basic information readily available when they appear
before us. As more funding becomes available for new children's
centres, the scope to reallocate funds will increase, but the
cost data to underpin effective re-allocation does not yet exist.
Local authorities should assess the unit costs of the main children's
centre services. They should develop indicative benchmarks, along
the lines of those illustrated in the National Audit Office's
report, to inform the budget setting for their centres and to
provide a baseline for identifying and investigating services
where costs are relatively high.
8. Lack of clarity over the cost-effectiveness
of the children's centre programme could increase further in future
unless expenditure, outputs and outcomes are properly monitored.
Under Local Area Agreements, local authorities will have more
freedom to move resources between services. This flexibility could
lead to better value for money, but only if the agreement specifies
clearly what is to be achieved and it is possible to demonstrate
achievement. The Department and local authorities should develop
a form of monitoring of Local Area Agreements that makes clear
the services to be delivered, the outcomes to be achieved and
how cost-effectiveness will be assessed, drawing on the model
for measurement in the National Audit Office report as appropriate.
The Department could also use longitudinal data from the National
Evaluation of Sure Start to assess whether the programme has been
benefiting some groups more than others.
9. Uncertainty about future funding has increased
the difficulty of managing some centres. Centres
need to know their funding allocations in good time to plan services,
but when the National Audit Office visited them in spring 2006,
a third did not know their budgets for the forthcoming year. The
Department's guidance on the next phase of children's centre roll
out should encourage local authorities and centres to have early
discussions about budgets, to allow allocations to be planned
well in advance of the new financial year.
10. Partnerships with Primary Care Trusts
have been slow to develop. Involving health
closely in children's centres has a double benefit by providing
a service most families need, and bringing more families into
a centre, but pressures at Primary Care Trusts have contributed
to difficulties in achieving more commitment from the health sector.
All Trusts should establish agreements with local authorities
to provide child and family health services through children's
centres.
11. Families with children with disabilities
need better information on what services they can expect to be
provided in children's centres and help with referral to services
that the centre cannot provide itself.
For some disabled children, children's centres can play an important
part, for example by providing early help for children with speech
and language difficulties, which can potentially reduce the need
for more expensive support as a child gets older. Centres should
communicate clearly which of these services they can provide directly.
Children with severe disabilities will require specialist support
beyond what can be delivered in centres, and centres should help
families to review the available options and access the most appropriate
services.
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