1 Departmental and local authority
management of the Sure Start children's centres programme
1. Sure Start is the Government programme to improve
services for children by bringing together early education, childcare,
health and family support. International evidence[2]
shows that particating in a programme that combines these sevices
improves the life chances of children, particularly if they are
from deprived backgrounds. Sure Start children's centres offer
the opportunity for many different services to be provided together
in convenient community settings.[3]
2. The new centres will have to be built and opened
very quickly if the Department for Education and Skills is to
achieve its target of 3,500 centres by 2010. Since March 2006,
local authorities have taken over the responsibility for creating
and managing the new centres. There were around 1,000 open by
September 2006, with a further 1,500 planned by March 2008. Although
most centres in Phase 1 of the programme have been developed from
facilities formed from earlier initiatives, only three quarters
of the target number of Phase 1 centres in the sample examined
by the National Audit Office were in operation by March 2006.
The centres in Phase 2 (to 2008) and Phase 3 (to 2010) will mainly
be new centres. The Department recognises that the programme is
ambitious, and has engaged a consortium, Together for Children,[4]
to help keep local authorities on track.[5]
3. Local authorities are responsible for managing
local service levels, though they are bound by a Memorandum of
Understanding with the Department. The Memorandum sets out what
the Government requires in return for the General Sure Start Grant,
which the Department allocates to authorities for children's centre
funding using formulae for each of the first two phases of the
children's centre programme. The rapid increase in children's
centres creates a risk that services will be diluted. While the
earliest centres were based in deprived areas, the new approach
of guaranteeing a centre for every community means that resources
will have to be spread more thinly. There is a risk that effective
services for the whole community could come at a cost of reduced
services for the most disadvantaged families.[6]
4. It will take several years for the full impact
of children's centres to become clear. The Department expects
to complete a five-year evaluation of the centres in 2008-09,
at which point it considers that it would be possible to assess
some of the benefits to young children and families.[7]
Medium and long-term impacts, for example on academic performance
and on health, will take some time. Early evaluations have only
shown marginal impacts, but both positive and negative effects
were relatively small, as would be expected at an early stage
of the programme.[8] The
Department considers that it would be difficult to assess wider
public support for the programme, although the users of centres
the National Audit Office consulted were generally satisfied.[9]
5. The Department is not evaluating whether people
who have used Sure Start centres fare better than those who do
not. Instead, the Department's evaluation of Sure Start Local
Programmes is focusing on what impact the programme has made on
all families with young children in the areas they serve. It is
therefore difficult to tell whether the centres are providing
value for money services that could not have been achieved by
other means.[10] The
National Audit Office report showed that centres were less good
at meeting the needs of some groups, such as fathers and some
minority ethnic communities, than others such as lone parents.
The report also found that many non-users had strong preconceptions
about the types of people whom the centres are meant to serve.[11]
6. The Sure Start programme represents a major investment
in public services. Not enough is being done to monitor how effectively
funds are spent. The Accounting Officer was unable to provide
information at the Committee's hearing on how much had been spent
on Sure Start since 1998. Subsequently it confirmed that from
April 1997 up to March 2006, it has spent some £4.8 billion
on early years' initiatives, of which £2.1 billion has been
spent on Sure Start Local Programmes and children's centres (Figure
1). A further £1.8 billion is to be spent by 2008.[12]
However, most of the local authorities interviewed by the National
Audit Office did not have a good understanding of how much services
should cost, and more than half of them have not been monitoring
performance. There is therefore no clear evidence that funds are
being spent in the areas where they are needed most. The Department
accepts that local authorities need to improve the way they administer
and monitor spending on children's centres, and in November 2006
issued guidance to local authorities on performance measurement
and monitoring. The Department believes that the Together for
Children partnership, as well as Ofsted-led joint area reviews,
will help in monitoring the efficacy of children's centres.[13]Figure
1: Department for Education and Skills' expenditure on Sure Start
programmes 1997-98 to 2005-06
The Department has spent £4.8 billion on Sure
Start programmes since April 1997, of which £2.1 billion
was spent on Sure Start local programmes and children's centres.
Note: The figure for children's centres and Sure
Start Local Programmes for 2005-06 is provisional.
Source: Department for Education and Skills
7. A third of the children's centres that the National
Audit Office visited in the fourth quarter of 2005-06 could not
provide a financial forecast for 2006-07 as they did not have
an agreed budget with their local authority. Where centres are
uncertain about the funding that they will receive in future,
they can find it hard to plan services and retain staff. They
may also be obliged to devote resources to fundraising, when the
resources could be used more profitably in providing services.
Added uncertainty may in future arise in local authorities which
operate Local Area Agreements. They can include children's centre
funding in their Agreement, which sets out the area's priorities
as agreed between central government, the local authority and
other local partners. These authorities have wider discretion
about how to use the funds that they receive from central government,
though centres must provide a common core of services and the
Memorandum of Understanding between local authorities and the
Department sets out expectations. To make the best use of funding,
local authorities will need to take account of local factors such
as rurality and changes in demand for childcare when allocating
budgets between centres.[14]
2 C&AG's Report, Appendix 4 Back
3
C&AG's Report, paras 1.1-1.8 Back
4
The consortium is led by Serco and includes CareandHealth,
ContinYou, 4Children and PA Consulting. It works with relevant
partners including Government Offices, the Training and Development
Agency, the Department's architectural consultants and Ofsted. Back
5
C&AG's Report, paras 1.2-1.6, 1.15; Qq 1, 3, 12-13, 19 Back
6
C&AG's Report, para 2.3, Appendix 2; Qq 9, 42-43, 61-64, 110 Back
7
Qq 55-58 Back
8
C&AG's Report para 4.5, Box 19; Qq 37-38, 101 Back
9
C&AG's Report, para 3.14; Q59 Back
10
C&AG's Report Box 19; Qq 34-36, 104 Back
11
C&AG's Report, paras 3.24-3.26 Back
12
Qq 51-54, 79-88, 114; Ev 17 Back
13
C&AG's Report para 2.22; Qq 9-10, 15-17, 91, 111 Back
14
C&AG's Report, Preface, paras 1.13, 2.8 and footnote 2 on
page 9; Qq 2, 26, 40, 61-64, 112 Back
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