House of Commons - Public Accounts - Thirty-Eighth Report

Select Committee on Public Accounts Thirty-Eighth Report

2 Improving local management and governance of children's centres

8. The earlier Sure Start Local Programmes were run by a variety of bodies including community and parents' groups. They were set up to be experimental. Though local authorities now have overall responsibility for children's centres, some continue to be managed by a mixture of voluntary organisations such as NCH and Barnados, Primary Care Trusts, private sector organisations and schools, but as at January 2007, three-quarters of children's centres were managed directly by local authorities (Figure 2).[15]Figure 2: Who manages children's centres?

Local authorities are responsible for the children's centre programme and in most cases they manage the centres directly.

Region	Local Authority	Primary Care Trust	Voluntary Organisation	Private sector	Other
London	134	2	20	5	4
South East	77	2	11	2	13
South West	72	1	15	3	1
West Midlands	66	3	33	3	18
East Midlands	66	11	8	0	3
Eastern	18	12	21	0	23
North East	111	0	5	0	0
North West	156	10	17	0	8
Yorkshire & Humber	98	12	17	0	17
TOTAL (1098)	798	53	147	13	87
% OF ALL	73	5	13	1	8

Source: Department for Education and Skills

9. The rapid expansion of the children's centres will only provide high quality services for children and families if there are sufficient well trained childcare professionals available to staff the centres. Our predecessors' report Early years: progress in developing high quality childcare and early education accessible to all[16] identified a risk that the number of skilled and qualified early years staff may not grow fast enough to meet the needs of the expanding sector. There is also a need for better training for staff in existing children's centres, especially on working in a multi-disciplinary setting. Only a third of the 134 staff working children's centres whom the National Audit Office interviewed felt well qualified to perform their roles.[17]

10. The Department is working alongside local authorities and the Children's Workforce Development Council[18] to provide staff with the right training, but sees training as a local authority responsibility. Local authorities are being encouraged to use the General Sure Start Grant to develop the workforce as well as to provide revenue funding for centres. The Department estimates that local authorities spent £74 million (15% of their Sure Start revenue budgets) on early years' workforce development in 2005-06. A further £250 million has been ring-fenced for raising the quality of the workforce in 2006-08. This additional funding will be targeted at the private, voluntary and independent childcare sectors, where the Department considers that the quality of provision is weakest and the workforce is least well qualified.[19]

11. The Children's Workforce Development Council has developed an Early Years Professional status; staff who achieve this status will have graduate-level skills, knowledge and practice in childcare. The Department plans that by 2010, graduate Early Years Professionals will be based in all children's centres that offer childcare. The first 400 candidates have achieved Early Years Professional status, while a further 2,000 started their training in January 2007. They will work in a range of settings in the private, voluntary, independent and maintained sectors.[20]

12. The Childcare Act 2006 requires local authorities to provide childcare places only if no other provider is willing to do so, or if special circumstances make it appropriate for the local authority to provide places, for example where existing provision is not of a satisfactory quality. Value for money can be compromised if children's centres provide childcare places that are not justified by local demand. Less than half of local authorities interviewed by the National Audit Office had consulted with private sector providers on childcare provision in their area. Private nurseries are concerned that they may be forced out of business if children's centres offer childcare places in areas where there is already a sufficient supply of places. In addition, the funding that some children's centres receive may make it hard for private sector providers to compete. The Department has urged local authorities to consult more with the private sector.[21]

13. There is a broad range in the scale of expenditure managed by individual centres, reflecting their history and different circumstances (Figure 3). For example, the centres that the National Audit Office visited included:

centres arising from a range of previous initiatives, providing different services with different levels of funding;
former Sure Start Local Programmes, some of which had been established for some years, and provided a wide range of services beyond children's centre core services;
some covering areas with small numbers of children, such as a rural mini-Sure Start covering 150 children of 0-5 years;
some centres with low expenditure where most services were provided by partner organisations; and
centres funded to cater for a range of catchment areas.[22] Figure 3: Expenditure managed by children's centres, 2005-06

The expenditure directly managed by the centres visited by the National Audit Office varied widely, reflecting their history and the number of families in their catchment areas.

Source: National Audit Office visits to 26 children's centres. Based on 2005-06 financial data, in some cases using costs in the third quarter to estimate the cost for the full year. For four of the 30 centres visited, information on expenditure was incomplete or missing and is not shown above.

Notes: 'Other' children's centres incorporate centres that have developed from Early Excellence centres, Neighbourhood Nursery Initiatives and Maintained Nursery schools.

14. The full impact of children's centres will not be apparent for some time, but there is a lot that centre managers can do in the meantime to take a disciplined approach to financial and performance management. When the number of children receiving services is taken into account, there are still wide variations in unit cost. Neither centres nor most local authorities have a good understanding of how much centres' services should cost.[23]

15. Half of the centres visited by the National Audit Office that have not developed from Sure Start Local Programmes wanted more financial training. The National Professional Qualification in Integrated Centre Leadership, developed by the National College for School Leadership for centre managers, includes training on financial management. To date, 800 centre managers have taken or are taking the course.[24]

16. The expansion of the children's centre programme, together with the relative inexperience of many staff in working in a multi-disciplinary setting, makes it all the more important that a strong system of management and accountability is operating. Local authorities are ultimately responsible for centre performance, but the number of centres they will need to oversee once all centres have been established will place a large burden on them. Reflecting the responsibility of local authorities, the Department expects there to be advisory boards, but these would not have the same degree of statutory responsibility as school governors. The Department had not yet provided guidance on the options for centres' accountability and management, though a training programme began in January 2007. It planned to issue detailed guidance in April 2007. By this time, more than 1,000 centres will have been operational without fully trained board members. Only a third of centres the National Audit Office visited had people overseeing them who centre managers considered understood the key issues involved in running a children's centre.[25]

15 Qq 20, 107; Ev 16 Back

16 Thirty-fifth report of Session 2003-04, HC 444, 7 September 2004 Back

17 C&AG's Report, para 2.15, Qq 4, 109 Back

18 The Children, Young People and Families Workforce Development Council supports training, qualifications and advice for people working with children. As one of five bodies forming the UK Skills For Care and Development Sector Skills Council, it is led by employers through a board of 25 representatives from a range of organisations. Back



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