Sarah
McCarthy-Fry: I understand the sentiment behind amendment
403, the suggestion that Sure Start children’s centres should
offer support for the wider family. Many of the sorts of service to
which this descriptor could apply, could be and are already being
delivered: early childhood services, as the hon. Lady said, defined in
section 2 of the Childcare Act 2006, and include social care and health
services for parents, carers and parents to be and assistance to
parents in seeking work through links to Jobcentre Plus services. These
services could include parenting programmes to help parents with their
children’s difficult behaviour, drug or alcohol addictions or
simply finding work. All of these services should have a beneficial
impact on child outcomes and all of them form part of the Sure Start
offer in different localities. Half of children’s centres are
located in schools and our programme of extended services in schools
means that those families using the co-locator facilities also have
access to the services for their older children. What we have tried to
do in clause 186 in our definition is to provide maximum flexibility,
while ensuring that all centres at a minimum provide assistance on
accessing early childhood services and activities to engage children
and their families. I would like to assure the hon. Lady that the
projects she referred to certainly would not be precluded under our
legislation. It would be a matter for local centres to decide what they
do. Our departmental guidance encourages planners to consult local
families before deciding which services to prioritise, which allows
considerable flexibility to plan around need and respond flexibly. In
our Sure Start children’s centres practice guidance, which we
issued in November 2006, there is specific advice to local authorities
that they could possibly include training for fathers, mothers and
other carers including English as an additional language where
relevant, which is the case she spoke of. It is important not to lose
sight of the core offer of Sure Start children’s centres, which
remains focused on very young children and their parents. It is right
to leave the planning and arrangements for delivering services to those
closest to the communities they serve. We would not want to force
smaller centres with a particular focus on early years provision to
extend their services to the detriment of the core. The key is
flexibility. With
respect to amendments 405 and 406, we believe that carers and parents
have a right to be consulted before significant changes are made to the
services offered by their local centre and where those services are
offered. In setting up Sure Start children’s centres we have
placed a clear emphasis on local consultation before decisions are
taken. All the evidence is that delivering services through
children’s centres, based on what families with young children
have said, works for them both in time and place and has encouraged
families to take up services. We now have positive evidence of the
benefits to all families living in a Sure Start area and the loss or
relocation of any of the services children’s centres offer could
be a matter of concern for families. We would not expect local
authorities to consult on every change—we agree that that would
be disproportionately burdensome—but we would expect
them to consult on significant ones. We will consult on the guidance for
local authorities on the fulfilment of their obligations, under the
Bill, to consult local people. That will provide a further opportunity
to explore in more detail how to ensure that this requirement balances
the interests of parents and children with the need to ensure
operational flexibility for local authorities. I hope that that
reassures the hon. Lady and that she will withdraw her
amendment. 9.15
pm
Mrs.
Miller: I am quite reassured by the Minister’s
comments on amendment 403, which will have reassured many of the
organisations doing such an excellent job in helping to ensure that
children in Sure Start centres are the success that we need them to be.
I thank her for that and will not pursue the amendment now.
I am still
not entirely convinced that the Minister has allayed my fears about
amendments 405 and 406. One of the big problems that children’s
centres still face concerns their ability to get their services to
those who need them most—those disadvantaged families who tend
not to take part in consultations or knock on the door and ask for
help. They are the ones whom we have to go out and find. They are not
the kind of people who take part in the sort of consultation enshrined
in the Bill. I remain deeply concerned that the provisions dealing with
consultation on the day-to-day services provided could not only hamper
innovation, but mean that children’s services do not do
everything necessary to focus on that silent minority who still find it
so difficult to get the support needed to give their children the start
in life that they deserve. In the interests of time, I shall not press
my amendment to a vote, but we might need to return to this matter. I
beg to ask leave to withdraw the
amendment. Amendment,
by leave,
withdrawn.
Annette
Brooke: I beg to move amendment 424, in
clause 186, page 103, leave out lines 7 to
11. This
probing amendment aims to clarify the purpose of the proposed duties of
governing bodies for each children’s centre. The amendment would
delete that provision. The reason for the probe is that it is very
unclear how governing bodies and advisory boards will co-exist. The
Conservatives have tabled an amendment in the next group that
approaches this issue from the opposite direction, so I hope that we
can deal with them briefly and at the same time.
I am
particularly concerned about the requirement on governing bodies,
because, as the National Audit Office noted, there are many different
models of governance of children’s centre. Some are based on
partnership boards, steering groups, school governing bodies, boards of
community organisations and so on. The differences reflect the diverse
practices of the sectors involved in managing the centres, and I
applaud that diversity. To define governing bodies will cause
confusion, given that a host of different people run Sure Start
children’s centres. We need some
clarification. We
also have advisory boards. I can see how they could work very well in
local areas, and I am fairly relaxed about them being put on a
statutory basis. My one issue is with proposed new section 5C(5)(c),
which states that an advisory board must include
“parents or
prospective parents in the responsible authority’s
area.” If
an advisory board covers only one or two children’s centres,
parents from the locality only should be included. Most constituencies,
for instance, have very different communities with different needs, and
I would not want advisory boards to be top heavy with those from,
perhaps, the more affluent parts of town. We need a good cross-section.
I therefore have a concern about that, but the major issue is that
surely, if every centre has to have a governing body, will it not
undermine the multi-purpose and community-focus nature of the centres?
Will the Minister clarify the respective roles, functions, members and
lines of accountability of governing bodies versus advisory
boards?
Sarah
McCarthy-Fry: We are pleased that there is a variety of
children’s centres available, offering a range of services to
local communities. We want to ensure that they all have good governance
arrangements in place. At present, advisory boards help to fulfil that
requirement, but in the future it may be necessary to introduce
governing bodies. It is a reserve power that we will use only if and
when the time is right. As we explained in the indicative regulations,
we might want, for example, to make regulations about the
qualifications of centre managers. Some have argued that all centres
should have a qualified teacher; we disagree, but it illustrates why
this power could be needed.
Should the
need arise to introduce governing bodies for centres, they would have a
different role from that of advisory boards. It is likely that they
would be a body corporate to which other statutory functions and
responsibilities, such as a formal decision-making power, to enable the
formal exercise of corporate governance, could be attached. That could
not happen with the current advisory boards. If we ever did go down
that route, we would expect the governing body to be smaller than the
advisory board, with a more executive, less stakeholder representative
focus. It would be responsible for taking decisions on the operation of
the children’s centre and, in doing so, we would expect them to
have regard to the views of users and particularly the advisory board.
We envisage there being some common membership between the governing
body and the advisory board, which would help effective co-operation
between the two.
If we ever
decided that governing bodies were desirable, we are absolutely
committed to full consultation with all interested parties. The
amendment would restrict future flexibility around appropriate
governance arrangements for centres and I ask the hon. Lady to withdraw
it.
Annette
Brooke: I thank the Minister for her reply. I made it
clear that it was a probing amendment, but, in terms of staffing, I
remain concerned at the thought of potentially having a governing body
and an advisory board for one children’s centre, which is not
such a large entity as a school. I will withdraw the amendment, but the
matter needs further reflection. I appreciate that it is a reserve
power, but if it were ever used, it could introduce much bureaucracy
and finding people to fill
the positions in a disadvantaged community would be quite a challenge. I
beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment,
by leave, withdrawn.
Mrs.
Miller: I beg to move amendment 401, in
clause 186, page 103, leave out lines 12 to
39.
There is a
risk of bureaucratic overload at this point in the Bill. We have just
looked at the role of children’s trust boards and the problems
in understanding how they fit alongside local strategic partnerships
and children’s safeguarding boards. The amendment would remove
the need to establish yet another body—the children’s
advisory board. As the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole said
in her remarks on the previous amendment, it seems extraordinary that
there would be a requirement to have both governing bodies and advisory
boards as well as children’s trust boards, in which there is a
strong argument for having a more obvious role for Sure Start
children’s centres.
The amendment
would remove the need to establish yet another body. That would be good
and ensure that we have more of the staff that we need to be engaged in
frontline activities rather than having to run these burdensome and
bureaucratic organisations. The explanatory note details that the role
of the advisory board would be to advise and assist the centre manager,
the local authority and its relevant partners to ensure that the centre
provides relevant and high-quality services. Surely making Sure Start
children centres participants in children’s trust boards would
have a similar effect. They would make sure that their services were
relevant and of a high quality, and remove another costly layer of
bureaucracy. I do not mean costly in terms of money, but in management
time by taking people away from the front
line. If
the Minister really feels that it is absolutely necessary to have a
strict management structure in place, why not make it a sub-committee
of the children’s trust boards and then at least it will not
just float in the ether with people unsure how it fits into the other
plethora of organisations with which they have to deal? If the prime
objective is to include parents, that is probably already being
achieved by most Sure Start children centres in the way that they
organise themselves to involve parents in helping to determine what
services are already in
place. Will
the hon. Lady assure those of us who are worried about levels of
bureaucracy in many areas of government, particularly in the matters
that we are discussing, that she has taken heed of our concerns? Will
she also take the opportunity to reassure the organisations that I have
been talking to—we have heard mention of the issue in
Committee—about the schoolification of the language that is
used? Talking about governing bodies really starts to make some
organisations feel that the Government might want to indelibly link
children’s Sure Start centres into schools. I am not sure that
that is their intention, but at the moment their use of language is not
helping.
Sarah
McCarthy-Fry: In legislating for children’s
centres, the Government are following the approach of putting into
statute recognised best practice, building on the development, work and
guidance already issued. We are
doing so in a flexible way, recognising that, for children’s
centres as with many other areas, one size does not fit all. What we
propose must be flexible for different circumstances, but we also know
that certain approaches are important to the effective running of
children’s centres. The creation of advisory boards is one of
those
areas. Advisory
boards are necessary for two related reasons. First, an effective
advisory board provides support and challenge to centre managers. A
National Audit Office report found that effective management boards or
committees can support the effective delivery of children’s
centres and provide focus and direction to give a good service to local
children and families. Secondly, advisory boards also provide a voice
for the community for users of services, especially parents, but also
other interested, local stakeholders. They can also work with
parents’ forums to ascertain the views of parents and users, who
have a right to their say on how the children’s centre will
operate, but who might not be comfortable in a more formal, corporate
governance
structure. Clause
186 also enables more than one children’s centre to be within
the remit of a single advisory board and that can be effective for
clusters of centres in some areas. I hope that my explanation is
sufficient to have reassured the hon.
Lady.
Mrs.
Miller: I wish that the Minister’s response was
sufficient to have reassured me, but she does not understand that, by
setting up more and more organisations and structures, she is taking
people away from doing what we need them to do, which is to improve the
start in life of youngsters and babies. Setting up yet another board,
yet another set of meetings for people to attend and yet another set of
minutes for people to read for a meeting will do nothing to free up
people’s time to do what they need to do. That is indicative of
the Government’s obsession with trying to micro-manage things
and not let people get on with the job that they need to
do. I
accept that we are under time pressure and shall not press the
amendment, but it is a great shame how the scrutiny of the Bill has
been arranged. As a result, we probably do not have the time to look at
such elements in detail. Perhaps they are something that the House
really does need to return to because, as the hon. Member for
Mid-Dorset and North Poole said, it is incomprehensible how all the
bureaucratic structures fit together. It is no way to set up a new
body.
Annette
Brooke: My comments were not quite so harsh on the
advisory boards; for example, the National Children’s Bureau
feels that it is working very well in their local areas. My main
concern is having two layers
there.
Mrs.
Miller: I am sorry. I meant that the hon. Lady was picking
up on the issue of having two organisations, which could be doing
similar things and working in parallel. I will not press the amendment
now, but I hope that the Minister will think about the comments that
have been made. I know that she shares my hope that what we are doing
today will improve the lives that young people have in all our
communities, but this is probably not the way to go about it. I beg to
ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment,
by leave, withdrawn.
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