Memorandum submitted by the Family and Parenting Institute

1. Introduction

1.1 The Family and Parenting Institute (FPI) is the UK's leading centre of expertise in families and the upbringing of children. We advocate for improved family and parenting services and we press for policy change to help address the challenges that families are facing.

1.2 Our aim is the wellbeing of children and families and to achieve this, we carry out research and policy work to find out what matters to families and parents. We develop ideas to improve the services families use and to improve the environment in which children grow up. We work to inform policymakers and public debate and we develop practical resources for people working with families.

1.3 Sure Start children's centres have already made an essential contribution towards providing integrated support for children and families. FPI would like to see continuing safeguards in place to ensure that they maintain this valuable work into the future. As many centres are still in their infancy and the Government has not yet completed their stated aim of every community being served by a children's centre by 2010, FPI was pleased with legislation that places them on a statutory footing. This allows existing centres to continue to develop in addition to ensuring that these services remain on the policy landscape for family services.

1.4 However, as research from FPI has shown, there is no doubt that evaluating early interventions is a difficult task, necessarily so because so many potential influences need to be taken into consideration. Accounting for change within an individual can be extremely complex; within groups of individuals, this can be even more difficult to track. Countless studies have underscored the extent to which development is in most aspects nonlinear and multiply determined; and that it has multiple goals, which can change, and multiple ways of reaching those goals (Barrett; 2007). When an early intervention programme is introduced, it should not be assumed that it will lead to the same outcome for all those in receipt of it.

 

1.5 A distinctive feature of the Sure Start model as an intervention programme is that it was deliberately conceived in such a way that participants can have a substantial influence on programme content. In this way, each Sure Start children's centre has developed a range of services that are unique to its particular local area. So, although it is conceived as an intervention offered universally to all residents with children aged 0-4 within a specific local area, in practice, it translates into many different types of activity.

 

2. Summary of FPI's response to the House of Commons Children, Schools and Families Committee Inquiry into Sure Start Children's Centres

2.1 Children's centres are building on their learning about reaching disadvantaged and excluded families to adjust their family support services for the larger populations of local families they now need to serve. The key challenge for the delivery of effective family support is to find and engage the families who stand to gain most from effective family support, while managing catchment, operational and funding changes.

2.2 This response is based on our on-going policy and development work and is supported by the following FPI research publication:

Apps, J., Reynolds, J., Ashby, V. and Husain, F. (2006) Family Support in Sure Start Children's Centres: Planning, Commissioning and Delivery; London: Family and Parenting Institute.

3. FPI's response to the House of Commons Children, Schools and Families Committee Inquiry into Sure Start Children's Centres

4. The range and effectiveness of services provided by Children's Centres

4.1 FPI research into family support within Sure Start children's centres defined 'family support' as all services which aimed to promote family wellbeing by improving relationships in families and improving standards of living. Children's centres were found to be providing a wide range of such services: home visiting, parenting courses, drop-ins, support groups, family learning activities, adult education and employment support.

 

4.2 Constructive engagement early on with parents who might use family support services was essential to successful planning. Centres emphasised the importance of:

 

· Starting consultation processes as early as possible

· Using local community partners to access parents

· Using a variety of techniques to engage different parents - such as face to face dialogue; questionnaires, focus groups, suggestion boxes

· Asking parents about location, format and content of services

· Involving parents on management boards, planning committees and, through their own groups, to plan and deliver some services

· Training and preparation for parents and professionals to work together

· Input being seen to be acted upon and input mechanisms developed which are reviewed regularly for effectiveness and acceptability.

5. Staffing, governance, management and strategic planning

5.1 FPI research into family support in Sure Start children's centres found that ongoing evaluation of services was described as an indispensable part of planning. Formal evaluation methods also worked well, using staff or external agencies and input from parents' groups; and informal evaluation methods were important, through feedback from centre users.

 

5.2 Staff teams varied widely in terms of size, structure and professional backgrounds. All staff teams included nursery staff plus outreach and family support workers. Many had additional posts focusing on health, benefits, careers and other issues critical to family support. Some had dedicated staff targeting black and minority ethnic groups, fathers and/or teen parents but most centres struggled to match staff ethnic and gender profiles to their local communities.

 

5.3 However this did not always appear to influence their success in reaching key groups. Centres emphasised that:

 

· Whole centre training for centre staff helped deliver a cohesive service

· 'Corporate level' training across local agencies helped provide a common approach to working with families

· Leadership matters - many centre managers were undertaking the National Professional Qualification in Integrated Centre Leadership.

 

6. How well Children's Centres work with other partners and services, especially schools and health services

6.1 FPI research into Sure Start children's centres showed that the centres were working with a wide range of service providers: health, education, and social services, schools, and voluntary, community and independent organisations. Closest links were usually with schools. 'Involvement' in this context meant referral pathways, co-location, co-delivery, reciprocal services, joint funding applications and community capacity-building.

 

6.2 Centres found that multi-agency working helped them to deliver effective family support. A family's needs could be supported very quickly, even in situations where families presented with complex, chaotic lifestyles. A well designed children's centre that engages well with other services, enables families to access a range of different support services swiftly.

 

6.3 The main challenges identified to cooperative working by the centres surveyed included:

 

· Accessing information on families

· Working with restructured and fragmented services

· Managing diverse teams

· Differences in professional cultures.

 

6.4 Nevertheless clear recommendations for effective multi-agency working emerged:

 

· Building extensive networks and links

· Developing shared policy and procedural frameworks and goals

· Joint preparation and training for multi-agency work

· Finding ways of collaborating with other agencies in particular to enable centres to identify new families in the area without contravening data protection policies.

 

 

6.5 'Corporate level' training across local agencies also helped to provide a common approach to working with families. Furthermore, many centres reported that having a highly qualified team leader enhanced the children's centre and increased the amount of support that centre staff felt they received.

 

6.6 In addition, the benefit of nurturing a joint vision or ethos was reported as beneficial. Different professions work differently and have differing expectations of the conditions in which they work. Generating an understanding of the role of families and parents within this created a different approach to mainstream service provision.

 

6.7 Many centres said that having an experienced family support team leader made a difference, especially if recruited at a high grade. This led to the rest of the staff team feeling more supported.

 

6.8 Conversely, using people from the community to deliver family support, though often successful and requested by parents, required careful planning, long induction, a professional approach and good support.

 

 

7. Whether services are being accessed by those most in need and how effective they are for the most vulnerable

7.1 FPI's study explored strategies to locate and engage new families. Crucially, reaching parents, especially those that had been excluded from services, depended on effective home visiting strategies. Universal visits to parents, right across the local community, often linked to supporting children's play at different stages of development as a less stigmatising focus than parenting support, helped centres to identify families who needed more support. Significantly this approach appeared to work for parents with multiple disadvantages, which had previsously excluded them from services.

 

7.2 Midwifery and health visiting services were essential to effective engagement with families, partly because of their universal reach to all local families, including groups that may not ordinarily have attended a children's centre. Parents came into centres primarily for their ante-natal care and became engaged in a whole range of courses and groups simply because of proximity to and knowledge of the service. It is relatively easy to get motivated parents to attend but the families that need additional support, also need additional effort to find and engage. This work may be longterm and is likely to be costly in terms of staff time.

 

7.3 Recommendations for developing services with children's centres for reaching the most vulnerable families include:

 

• Access to 'hard-to-reach families' often depends upon presenting services as an entitlement and as aligned to familiar health services

 

• Regular, informal contact, for example through drop-ins and baby cafes, helps build trust, as does an offer of respite childcare

 

• For some centres there will be a benefit from dedicated staff and special programmes to attract BME families, fathers, teenagers and other groups of potentially excluded parents

 

• Newsletters, flyers, local press and space in local publications all have their place in promoting services, but word of mouth is the most effective promotion.

 

October 2009

8. References

Barrett, H. (2007) Evaluating Evaluations: Evaluating recent evaluations of Sure Start, Home Start and Primary Age Learning Study; London: The Family and Parenting Institute.

Apps, J., Reynolds, J., Ashby, V. and Husain, F. (2006) Family Support in Sure Start Children's Centres: Planning, Commissioning and Delivery; London: Family and Parenting Institute.