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Memorandum submitted by

Blaby District, Oadby and Wigston Borough Council

 

 

1. Key Points

 

- The sure start children's centre programme requires the development of integrated provision not a separate new service

- Value for money comes from building partnerships and commissioning new services that add value and compliment existing services

- Pooling resources, information and budgets gives greater value for money than a separate stand alone service

- Targets are shared by a range of agencies and overlapping strategies, they are not exclusive to children's centres

- It is more effective for our population to develop specialist support across the eight reach areas than duplicating each centre.

 

2. It would be a missed opportunity to treat all children centre programmes as only building based services. The Sure Start Children's Centre programme supports the ECM outcomes through better integration of universal and targeted support to children under five. Phase two and three children's centres have markedly different resources than phase one children's centres and operate in larger populations over wider areas. The goals of Every Child Matters and the Children's Plan can only be achieved through an integrated approach to the delivery of services to children and families. It is the outcomes that should be the focus rather than one method of delivery

 

3. Single building should not be evaluated as a separate stand alone service. The key questions for evaluation would be more focussed if they asked how does the local programme impact on the ECM outcomes for the local population through meeting unmet need and better integration. The Children's Centre programme is one strand of provision to achieve the ECM outcomes, the buildings are resources to contribute as are the projects commissioned in the programme. These more effectively deliver within the framework of children's provision that is much wider than the individual reach areas of 800 to 1200 children. The context for the evaluation is too limited to grasp the integrated impact on ECM targets if it limits itself to individual reach areas.

 

4. Top tier local authorities are responsible for the delivery of the programme and lead on ECM outcomes. Any evaluation of local provision should be as much an evaluation of the strategy and oversight by the local authority as an evaluation of the staff locally on the ground. The local authority and the Trust are responsible for achieving an integrated effective joined up service for children and families which is a key element for the effective delivery of local Sure Start programmes. Rather than inspecting individual centres we believe a single joint evaluation across agencies of the impact of the programme relative to the national performance targets in the responsible local authority would be a more efficient and effective approach.

 

5. We deliver a children's centre programme across a Borough and District overseen by a locality partnership and joined to the agencies that deliver services. The performance indicators for the children's centre programme are shared targets to which the children's centre programme contributes its resources. None of the national indicators for the children's centre programme are solely devolved to the children's centres. In our model for the programme we achieve impact and better value for money by delivering integrated services on a locality basis using specialised projects rather than duplicating services for each reach area. Therefore we can only be inspected as a Locality and a partnership rather than a building based service. Where the buildings are located does not define the services or the target population.

6. Our children's centre programme serves all the children under five within the locality reach area (8,200 under fives). Location of a building within the site of a particular school may have some benefits to the programme from that location but the programme works with all the schools and must in no way be seen as co-terminous with the feeder population for a particular school. We have eight reach areas within the Locality and fifty one schools within the Locality. Our programme serves all the under fives regardless of where individual buildings are located. No school includes a children's centre, it is part of our partnership that some schools have shared their sites with our buildings but our partnership is with all the schools and we deliver services along with our partners in other venues across the District and Borough.

 

Tim Brooke

Locality Partnership Co-ordinator

Blaby, Oadby and Wigston

Children's Extended Services

Locality Partnership Group

 

October 2009