House of Commons - Sure Start Children's Centres - Children, Schools and Families Committee

Sure Start Children's Centres - Children, Schools and Families Committee Contents

4 Impact and evaluation

75. Early findings from the National Evaluation of Sure Start (NESS), which focused on the first tranche of Sure Start Local Programmes, were discouraging. In 2005, there was some evidence that the most disadvantaged three-year-olds and their families (teenage parents, lone parents, workless households) were sometimes doing less well in Sure Start areas, while less disadvantaged children in those areas benefited from the programmes. However, the most recent findings reported to us by the director of NESS, Professor Edward Melhuish, indicated that all effects associated with Sure Start were beneficial, and these beneficial effects appeared to apply in all sub-populations and in all Sure Start areas studied. Parents in Sure Start areas relative to those in non-Sure Start areas reported using more child and family-related services, with more engagement in "developmentally facilitative parenting", and their children were socially more competent.[143] These results seem to show that programmes are becoming more effective over time, particularly in their work with the most disadvantaged, and that children are feeling the benefit of longer exposure to the programmes.[144]

The evaluation and performance management framework

76. The Government's strategy for measuring the impact of Children's Centres is three-fold; performance management by local authorities (based on completion of a self-evaluation framework and an 'annual conversation' between Centres and their local authority), Ofsted inspection of individual Centres which will commence in 2010, and a five-year national evaluation of the programme which has been commissioned from Oxford University and the National Centre for Social Research.[145] The indicators against which Children's Centres are asked to report their performance in the self-evaluation framework are wide-ranging but specific, and are set out in the following table:Children's Centres performance indicators

Performance indicator Public Service Agreement to which the indicator belongs

Children aged 0-4 living in households dependent on workless benefits
(National Indicator 116)
PSA 9
(Halve the number of children in poverty by 2010-11, eradicate child poverty by 2020)

Eligible families benefiting from the childcare element of Working Tax Credit
(National Indicator 118)
N / A

Children who achieve a total of at least 78 points across the Early Years Foundation Stage with at least 6 points in each of two scales: Personal, social and emotional development; and Communication, language and literacy
(National Indicator 172)
PSA 10
(Raise the educational achievement of all children and young people)

Gap between the lowest achieving 20% in the Early Years Foundation Stage Profile and the rest
(National Indicator 192)
PSA 11
(Narrow the gap in educational achievement between children from low income and disadvantaged backgrounds and their peers)

Children in reception year who are obese
(National Indicator 155)
PSA 12
(Improve the health and wellbeing of children and young people)

Infants continuing to be breastfed at 6 to 8 weeks from birth
(National Indicator 153)
PSA 12

Emergency admissions caused by unintentional or deliberate injuries to children and young people
(National Indicator 70)
PSA 13
(Improve children and young people's safety)

Parental satisfaction with Children's Centre services N / A

Members of the most excluded groups in the reach area with whom the Centre makes contact:

teenage mothers and pregnant teenagers
lone parents
children in black and minority ethnic groups
children with disabilities
children of disabled parents
fathers
N / A

77. Following the 2004 Spending Review, the DCSF was given two Public Service Agreement targets (held jointly with the DWP) to which Children's Centres made a contribution, measured by four indicators. Good progress was made by 2008 on one of the four sub-targets, an increase in Ofsted-registered childcare places. The other sub-targets were not met:

the number of children in lower income working families using formal childcare decreased, whereas the target was to increase take-up by 120,000;
49% of children reached a 'good level of development' at the end of the Foundation Stage, compared with a target of 53%; and
there was no reduction in inequality between child development achieved in the 30% most disadvantaged communities and in the rest of England, against a target to reduce the gap by four percentage points.[146]

78. Since then there has been an improvement against the latter two targets, an improvement which the Department for Children, Schools and Families at least partly attributes to the impact of Children's Centres. The percentage of children achieving 'a good level of development' according to the Early Years Foundation Stage Profile increased in 2009 to 52%, just short of the 2011 target of 53%. The achievement gap between the lowest 20% of children and the mean was 34% in 2009. Nationally, this is an improvement of two percentage points over the 2008 baseline, although in 40 local authorities the gap has widened.[147]

79. The Audit Commission published a study of health services for the under-fives in February 2010. It concluded that spending over the previous decade, including on Sure Start, had not produced widespread improvements in health outcomes. Performance against some health indicators, such as obesity and dental health, had in fact worsened, and the health inequalities gap between rich and poor had barely changed.[148]

Opinion in the sector about the impact of Children's Centres

80. Despite this mixed picture, the majority of submissions to this inquiry evinced a strong commitment to the idea of Children's Centres, and a firm belief both that they are having benefits now, and that they will over time reduce the need for more expensive and intrusive interventions later in children's lives.[149] Although few view Children's Centres as the finished article, Emma Knights, Joint Chief Executive of the Daycare Trust, summed up the general feeling when she said "it has been not just a step in the right direction but thousands of steps".[150] Jan Casson of Northumberland County Council told us:

I was running a home visiting scheme before Sure Start came along, and I was running it on very little money. Every day we were seeing children whose home situations weren't bad enough to come to the attention of social services, but those children were living in situations that in the 20^th century, as it was then, we should have been ashamed of. I can't even think what it would be like to go back to pre-Sure Start times. The number of children we saw on a daily basis whom we were letting down doesn't even bear thinking about.[151]

Martin Narey, Chief Executive of Barnardo's, told us about his first experience of Sure Start after starting to work in the voluntary sector:

when I first saw the Centres, I was most struck by speaking to parents—mums inevitably—who had had older children and contrasted for me their experience of bringing up children pre-Sure Start and post-Sure Start. I saw the change in ambition and aspiration for the children, a belief that the children could do much better and the sense of children being supported. I was hugely taken with that and I probably visited 50 or 60 Children's Centres since then. I have continued to be impressed.[152]

81. Ofsted and other organisations have reported very positive feedback from parents about Children's Centres.[153] User satisfaction surveys, case studies and anecdotal evidence all speak to the impact of services on families' lives.[154] The Government's January 2010 Green Paper on families and relationships acknowledges Centres' potential as exemplars of 'family-friendly' public services.[155] Children's Centres were described in much of the evidence we received in terms emphasising that they are experienced by staff and users as qualitatively different from other services for families: personalised, welcoming, friendly and non-stigmatising.[156] It is common for parents to describe the impact of their contact with Children's Centres as "life-changing".[157]

82. Some local authorities and providers have attributed improved performance against Early Years Foundation Stage indicators to the influence of Children's Centres.[158] Richard Thornhill, Headteacher of the Loughborough Primary Federation and Children's Centre, told us that their combined Children's Centre and school tracking system has identified positive impacts in terms of behaviour and attendance.[159] Independently of national evaluations, a number of research projects have been commissioned locally, or for a sample of Centres in particular circumstances, such as rural areas.[160] Worcestershire County Council reported an evaluation of two of their Centres run by Action for Children which found that 93% of users recognised direct benefits to their families from accessing services at the Centre.[161] The Centre for Public Policy at Northumbria University studied the impact of Children's Centres in North Tyneside and found that service users that reported the Centres have, among other benefits, improved their children's speech and language, improved parents' relationships with their children, and made both parents and children more confident.[162]

Are the most vulnerable being reached?

83. Much of the local research that has taken place has, however, relied on looking at the impact of services on those who are using them, rather than the degree of success a Centre has at reaching out to others. The greatest challenge for Children's Centres is to engage effectively with excluded groups and families who normally remain alienated from public services.[163] Professor Siraj-Blatchford told us:

You can have a Children's Centre that achieves what it wants to with 75% of its population, and one down the road that achieves that with only 25%. But the one with the 75% may only be reaching 20% of the people in the community who need to be using that Centre.[164]

84. A number of characteristics contribute to Children's Centres' reputed ability to reach vulnerable families that have previously remained elusive to mainstream services.[165] Integrated, multi-agency teams stand a better chance of identifying families that might slip through the nets of individual agencies, picking up on needs that may otherwise go undetected, and smoothing the pathways between services that were previously difficult for parents to navigate.[166] Assertive and personalised outreach reduces the risk of disengagement, as workers focus on giving parents the motivation, confidence and practical means to attend.[167] The open access nature of Children's Centres reduces the stigma that can affect services exclusively aimed at vulnerable families, and removes the barrier of thresholds that restrict access to higher-tier services.[168] Physical co-location of services means that parents who have been persuaded through the doors for the first time for a particular reason become familiar with the environment and are much more likely to use other services in the same premises.[169]

85. One effect of all these combined factors is individual services finding that more families are using them, and reductions in the numbers of 'no-shows' for appointments.[170] The Royal College of Midwives, for example, told us that many women who wouldn't previously have received maternity care are now accessing it through Children's Centres, and are in addition being referred on to supporting, non-maternity services.[171] At Queen's Park Children's Centre we heard how unfulfilled speech and language therapy appointments had reduced since the service has been delivered through Children's Centres rather than traditional clinic settings.[172]

86. However, success in this regard is by no means guaranteed. Research published by Ofsted in July 2009 stated that:

Engagement with the most vulnerable children and families continues to be a challenge [for Children's Centres …] The scale of the problems they sometimes encountered was daunting. Despite a clear commitment to reach out to the most disadvantaged and vulnerable parents, no centres felt they were fully successful in doing so. They reported that families involved in, for example, drug misuse, domestic violence, or who operate at the fringes of the law, do not necessarily want to be reached. Such families often move frequently and are difficult to track.[173]

The Pre-school Learning Alliance noted that "A 'stay and play' session, however open and welcoming, requires certain social skills and parents who have difficulty with their relationship with their child and problems with parenting skills can easily feel under pressure in this type of situation. Parents under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol are not in a position to play in the sand or with paint."[174] Some young parents have told of their reluctance to use Children's Centres, either because they feel isolated from mainstream services in general, or because they fear being judged by professionals or other parents.[175] 'The community' can itself be excluding.[176]

87. Particular concerns have been raised about the extent to which Children's Centres are successful at catering for, among others, disabled children (who may find themselves excluded from mainstream activities and relegated to a single support group), traveller families, those who speak English as an additional language, and black and minority ethnic families.[177] Two barriers cited to Children's Centres catering more effectively for some of these groups are a lack of detailed data, and lack of diversity among Children's Centres staff.[178]

88. Children's Centres employ dedicated outreach workers to concentrate on initial contact with families and to encourage them to take up services. The Sure Start, Early Years and Childcare Grant for 2008-11 included funding for one outreach worker for every Centre.[179] The 2007 Comprehensive Spending Review announced funding for an additional two outreach workers at each Children's Centre in the 1500 most deprived areas.[180] Although the Government's clear expectation is that in the most disadvantaged areas there should be at least three outreach workers in each Centre, information on how many workers are actually employed in that capacity is not collected or monitored nationally.[181]

89. Research undertaken by the National Audit Office in autumn 2009 concluded that the increased funding appears not to have led to the increase in numbers of outreach workers desired by the Department.[182] The NAO's survey found that Centres servicing the 30% most deprived communities reported an average of only 38 staff hours spent on parental outreach each week. However, the NAO notes that the Department believes this figure may underestimate the number of hours of outreach provided by centres, for example, because a range of staff—not just those employed explicitly in outreach roles—may undertake outreach as part of their work, or because some Centres may not have included non-contact time in their estimates of hours worked.[183]

90. The best Centres may employ outreach workers with qualifications comfortably exceeding the NVQ2 Level demanded of all Children's Centre workers.[184] Nevertheless, the training and qualifications of outreach workers are an area of concern, particularly as home visiting requires different attitudes and skills to those needed for centre-based work.[185] The Minister for Children, Young People and Families, Rt Hon Dawn Primarolo MP, said in October 2009 that the qualifications required for outreach practitioners "will depend on the different job roles and purposes developed in each Centre, which will be in response to local need. Relevant qualifications include those from child care, family support, social care, counselling, teaching and community work."[186] The Minister informed us that the Department is committed to improving training for the whole children's workforce in the skills needed to support parents who are reluctant or feel unable to seek help.[187] Training and research organisation Capacity noted, however, that "many effective outreach staff use knowledge, experience and skills which are not reflected in formal qualifications and it is important that this dimension is retained."[188]

91. We recommend that the Government investigate the need for a qualification specific to Children's Centre outreach work, based on the experiences of long-standing Centres with a track record of success in engaging vulnerable families. This need not replace entirely the variety of qualifications which outreach workers currently hold, but it could supplement them by spreading best practice and defining the outreach role more sharply in relation to the roles of other professionals.

92. Children's Centres cannot assess how effectively they are reaching the most vulnerable within their community unless they have the right data to do so. Many organisations have pointed out to us that such data is difficult to come by.[189] There is some research suggesting that Children's Centres have been relatively successful at attracting users from across the full social spectrum—undermining arguments that Sure Start has become dominated by middle-class parents—but few Centres routinely capture the type of data assembled by research studies that allows them to demonstrate this.[190] The Government does not collect data nationally about usage of Children's Centres, but it expects local authorities "to satisfy themselves on a regular basis that Children's Centres in their localities are reaching the most disadvantaged families."[191] The self-evaluation framework asks Children's Centres to track how many members of certain excluded groups the Centre is reaching, and Ofsted inspections will examine arrangements for reaching out to the most vulnerable. The national evaluation of Children's Centres will seek to create a profile of users and non-users, and investigate why some families do not access Centres.

93. The Government must investigate ways in which information captured locally about how successfully Children's Centres are reaching the most vulnerable can be given a more robust basis, such as by requiring standardised data sets to be made available by the responsible agencies, and can be aggregated to produce a nationwide picture.

Are Children's Centres value for money?

94. Several organisations made the point that the Children's Centres model—particularly in its later phases—relies on bringing together existing pots of funding, staff and resources, and sharing expertise.[192] There is a widespread assumption that co-location and integration are inherently cost-effective ways to work, especially when this can be organised by local authorities on an area-wide basis rather than for each individual Centre.[193] Others argued that, by embodying a preventative approach, Children's Centres will reduce the need for later, more expensive interventions such as taking children into care, making alternative provision for education, or dealing with teenage pregnancy or criminal behaviour.[194] Action for Children reported research estimating that £4.60 will eventually be generated in "social value" for every £1 invested in an effective Children's Centre.[195] However, even the highest-quality early years services cannot act as a one-off, foolproof "inoculation" against difficulties later in life.[196]

95. The National Audit Office reported in 2006 that Children's Centres were unable to supply sufficiently detailed and reliable information on income, expenditure and the unit costs of activities to allow a comparison of efficiency, or an evaluation of the overall value for money of the programme. Undertaking research for this inquiry in 2009, the NAO found this situation largely unchanged; many Centres were unable to supply data for capturing income and expenditure consistently, and much of the data supplied were not in a comparable form.[197] The Audit Commission reported in February 2010 that, in health services for the under-fives generally, less emphasis is placed on assessing the value for money offered by services that are already in operation, rather than proposed new services, and that changes to services rarely occurred as a result of negative evaluations.[198]

96. The great diversity in Centre services, different models of commissioning services, and the wide range of IT and other systems use for financial management were all cited as reasons for this.[199] Work by local authorities to understand the unit costs of activities had also not advanced as much as expected since 2006.[200] A DCSF-commissioned feasibility study on a financial benchmarking system for Centres concluded in 2009 that financial and performance management systems would not at that time support benchmarking. Together for Children are currently developing a process for local authorities and Centres to use for identifying unit costs.[201]

97. At the national level, information about the funding of Children's Centres provided to us by the Department details only spending from the Sure Start, Early Years and Childcare Grant. This grant supports management, outreach, capital and qualified teacher costs, but other elements of the core offer—health and Jobcentre Plus services—are funded by other Government departments, much of it not 'new' spending, but existing resources that are now being directed through Children's Centres. Further services may be funded directly by local authorities, or by a variety of grants.[202] We asked the Minister whether the Department knew what the total extent of resources going into Children's Centres was, but received no new information.[203]

98. In order to evaluate the cost-effectiveness and value for money of Children's Centres nationally, the Government must make more effort to work out the totality of funding that is supporting Centres, including resources from the Departments of Health and for Work and Pensions. It is unacceptable that such basic information remains apparently unknown.

Lack of information

99. Ofsted stated that local authorities' work to develop accurate local data and effective approaches to evaluating impact has been "variable";

Children's Centres and local authorities do not yet have the data to hand at local level to be able to determine the effectiveness of Children's Centres. Nearly all Centres can point to real successes with individual families. None of those inspected could provide a convincing analysis of performance based on rigorous analysis of data.[204]

This picture of the type of information that Children's Centres have gathered—unsystematic, dependent on case studies and anecdote—was echoed by several witnesses.[205] Case studies produce some powerful stories, but by their nature only highlight those areas where practice is innovative or of a particularly high quality; they are more useful as a learning tool than as an evaluation strategy. There is widespread agreement that more 'hard' evidence is needed, both of Centres' effectiveness at engaging the most vulnerable as discussed above, and of the impact of their services.

100. Collecting useful, comparable data is demanding in terms of time and skills, and complicated by several factors. At the most basic level, it is not straightforward to map and track exactly who is using the services at a particular Centre, because parents are free to choose any Centre they wish, not just one on their doorstep.[206] There are many potential influences on child or family's outcomes, and early intervention programmes do not lead to identical outcomes for all those involved.[207] Additionally, a full evaluation of Centres' impact would need to include an assessment of whether a Centre is a better way of delivering services than the structures it has replaced or supplemented. The Royal College of Midwives, for example, stated that it would welcome a formal evaluation of the efficacy of maternity services as delivered through Children's Centres, rather than in the more usual acute setting.[208] Such information is crucial to making the case for other services' participation in Children's Centres.

101. Children's Centres rely on baseline data provided by their statutory partners and national bodies.[209] Even when the information is forthcoming, it is not always at the level of detail required. Information-sharing protocols with other agencies are lacking, when often that information would enable Centres to target their services more effectively.[210] Particular difficulty attaches in some areas to accessing information held by health agencies.[211] Cynthia Knight, leader of St Thomas' Children's Centre in Birmingham, told us "We are certainly not getting support for the data analysis. In our self-evaluation form the health data section is empty."[212]

102. Particularly mobile communities pose particular challenges to evaluation. In some London boroughs, population mobility is greater than 35% each year, and it is known that a large proportion of this movement takes place among sections of the community with a higher than average need for support from public services. Lone parent households with dependent children and households with low incomes are known to be over-represented among the highly mobile population, for example. Children of school age who move home frequently are more likely to be in receipt of free school meals and are more likely to have English as a second language. Services in one area may invest heavily in helping a family, only for that family to move on and the progress they have made to be lost to local performance monitoring. The impact of any early intervention or preventative service is nearly impossible to capture in such circumstances. The problem of assessing cost-effectiveness is also exacerbated if, as has been thought, there is a higher cost associated with delivering services to families who frequently move home.[213] Sarah Benjamins, a former Sure Start Local Programme co-ordinator, told us that

in areas with transient communities such as the one I worked in, overall statistics may not show marked improvements, but the life chances of those children involved in the programme for a year or two will still have been affected—linear studies would need to be carried out to assess these impacts. For example, in my area many parents getting into employment will have moved out and been replaced by new families with different needs.[214]

103. We recommend that the Government commission research into the ramifications of population mobility for the delivery and impact of early childhood services including Children's Centres. We also recommend that the Government issue guidance on how Centres in areas with highly mobile populations can undertake effective evaluation of their services.

104. Front-line staff, trained primarily to deliver services, need training and support if they are to be expected to collect and analyse data.[215] Dr Margy Whalley told us that in Sure Start programmes, staff were not being trained or funded in the same way that staff in Early Excellence Centres had been to evaluate the impact of their own work on families, as more emphasis was put on the national evaluation project. Dr Whalley advocated a significant investment in turning the Children's Centres workforce into effective "practitioner-researchers".[216] Cynthia Knight concurred that it was the Early Excellence Centres initiative that gave her Centre a good foundation in devising quantitative and qualitative measures of impact for parents, families, staff and children;

We seem to have lost track of that. Overall in Children's Centres, I don't think we have the framework strongly given to us on how to measure those outcomes. Not all Children's Centres are confident about measuring outcomes that are not just quantitative in and out ones.[217]

Professor Iram Siraj-Blatchford commented that training and leadership courses for Children's Centres are poor at developing capacity for evaluating impact.[218]

105. All those that we spoke to are aware of how much work there is still to do in relation to local evaluation and tracking outcomes.[219] Individual Children's Centres leaders feel pressure to demonstrate the worth of their work.[220] The Association of Directors of Children's Services reported that most local authorities are attempting to address the diversity of approaches to performance management that have developed in their Children's Centres by adopting a common, consistent model across their area. However, they note that "at a national level this creates the potential for each local authority to be using a different model and therefore data sets will not be comparable across the country."[221]

106. Liz Railton, Chief Executive of Together for Children, refuted the idea that data collection across the country is currently too fragmented to produce a coherent picture. She argued that, although local authorities may be using different systems, they are by and large collecting data about the same things; 84% of local authorities are using the recommended self-evaluation framework, so there is a measure of consistency.[222] Liz Railton also argued that there is value in 'anecdotal' evidence when it is so consistent: "when you are getting those sorts of stories everywhere, isn't that part of systematic feedback about how people experience these services and the impact that it makes on them? It is an important part of the picture."[223]

107. Ann Gross, Director of the Early Years, Extended Schools and Special Needs Group at the DCSF, told us:

We have been doing some work to try to understand the best way of moving forward to improve the national data. We need to do it in a way that is not too intensive, in terms of the demands that it makes, particularly on Children's Centres, which are quite small organisations. We want to get a reasonable balance here. We are currently consulting local authorities on what financial data we ought to be collecting, so that we have better national data on how money is being spent on children's centre services. We also need to think about what we collect in terms of information on outputs and outcomes. That work is under way.[224]

108. We recommend that the Department assess the need for training Children's Centre staff and leaders in the techniques and mindset they will need in order to become 'practitioner-researchers'. There is huge potential for Children's Centres to be hubs of workforce learning and continuous improvement, and we are concerned by reports that the good work of Early Excellence Centres in this respect has not been mainstreamed within Children's Centres.

What impact are Children's Centres having beyond their own service users?

109. Inspection and performance management will focus on the efficacy of Children's Centres services. Individual Centres are, however, one of the main instruments at local authorities' disposal for reducing inequalities and improving outcomes across the whole community, and several organisations made the argument that these wider impacts must also be evaluated.[225]

110. A number of local authorities have referred in written evidence to ways in which the development of Children's Centres in their area has been the catalyst for a wider re-configuration of all local services for children and young people, or how Children's Centres have been integrated into the broader work of Children's Trusts.[226] Children's Centres have the potential to co-ordinate and lead the delivery of all services for under-fives.[227] Several councils described new ways of working or new teams that they have set up in, around or linked to Children's Centres. These multi-agency teams may aim to reduce the number of families who potentially slip through the net,[228] to ensure that families with needs thought of as tiers 2 and 3 receive services,[229] to underpin their work with the Common Assessment Framework,[230] or to implement a personalised approach to outreach work.[231] John Harris, representing the Association of Directors of Children's Services, told us:

Children's Centres, in my view, model the joined-up delivery of services for vulnerable children and families envisaged in Every Child Matters and the Children Act. They provide the most visible evidence of impact to date of Every Child Matters in action, particularly in targeting work with the most vulnerable children and families through universal services.[232]

They have even been cited as an inspiration for wider public service reform by fundamentally altering the relationship between residents and services.[233] The London Borough of Newham described them as "the best approach to collaborative and potentially cost-effective models of local delivery that currently exists in the public sector."[234]

111. A Children's Centre with a reach area of, for example, 800 families may have early education and care places for at most 100 children. In order to have the maximum impact on children's development, therefore, Centres need to be able to exert a positive influence on other local settings where children learn—whether that be other childcare provision in the local area, or the effectiveness of the family home as a place for learning.[235] Where their own provision is known to be high quality, Children's Centres are in a good position to promote effective practice in early education and care at other settings, by supporting training and sharing good practice. A number of Children's Centre leaders act in a training advisory role for their local authorities and support local private, voluntary and independent settings, including with management and leadership mentoring.[236] Pauline Trudell and Barbara Riddell argued that the role of maintained nursery schools as exemplars of outstanding quality, and as sources of training and support for other settings is "largely unexploited but crucial."[237] This strand of work was developed strongly in one of the predecessor initiatives, Early Excellence Centres.

112. The EPPE project[238] has shown how important the home learning environment is to children's progress, but professionals' understanding of how to affect it and the tools they have at their disposal for doing so are limited.[239] Naomi Eisenstadt told us, "there are opportunities in everyday contact with mothers and fathers to have those conversations with them, about whether you count when you set the table for a meal, or whether you cook with your child. There are so many opportunities to learn with small children at home, and it's so much fun. We need to get parents doing that."[240] Dr Margy Whalley advocated devising a performance indicator for Children's Centres based on parents' involvement in their children's learning. She emphasised how Children's Centres need to recognise and build on the work that parents are already doing with their children.[241]

113. Children's Centres have the potential to transform children's services by leadership and by example. We recommend that the Government recognise these effects when assessing the full impact of the programme.

114. In order to fulfil their potential for improving children's lives, Children's Centres with proven expertise in early learning need to have the time, skills, resources and remit to promote quality learning in other early years settings and in the home. We recommend that supporting other settings should be an aspect of these Centres' work which is reflected in the core offer, and against which they are assessed.

How soon can we expect Children's Centres to show results?

115. The full impact of Children's Centres will not be discernible for some time. A robust evaluation of outcomes for individual children and their families would entail a longitudinal study through to adulthood.[242] Ann Gross cited the evidence from the US Head Start programme to argue that, "in order to really evaluate impact on outcomes, you probably need to look over a generation. You are talking about 20 or 25 years to see the full impact."[243] Witnesses cited the youth of the initiative, the low starting point of investment in early years services, the need to bed in multi-agency partnerships, and the nature of the most disadvantaged communities as reasons to be patient.[244]

116. Those who run long-established Centres report emphatically the advantage they have over Centres set up only in the past two years.[245] Dr Margy Whalley told us:

The Children's Centre I work in is a vibrant one-stop shop. It provides a relatively seamless service to families, it has become the university of the workplace and it is well embedded in a rich, vibrant and vocal community and it has a transformational agenda [...] It has taken 28 years to develop.[246]

Teresa Smith, who is a member of the team which has been commissioned to evaluate Children's Centres over the next five years, warned that

We are at the very beginning of the journey of being able to demonstrate to you whether Children's Centres work and to what extent they work […] I suspect one lesson that has not been learned is that the impacts of programmes like this are always going to be relatively small scale in comparison with the outset expectations […] but they will be in the right directions.[247]

117. However, there have already been calls from some quarters for the investment in Sure Start to be brought to an end because the benefits are not yet apparent.[248] Emma Knights of the Daycare Trust articulated a concern of many stakeholders: "one worries that decisions are going to be made in the near future that don't necessarily wait for those evaluations."[249] While there may be good reasons why there is no comprehensive evaluation information available yet, the current financial climate makes it unwise to simply assume the benefits.[250] Martin Narey of Barnardo's told us: "The problem is there's not going to be any cash. We wouldn't be here giving evidence if Sure Start had yet proven its case. We have more to do to prove the long-term efficacy of Sure Start, much as I believe in it."[251]

118. Encouragingly, the Minister showed that there is political understanding of the need to be patient, telling us that it is difficult to put a time constraint on cultural and aspirational shifts in families.[252] Liz Railton commented that "there is a risk of pulling up the seedling on a regular basis to see whether it is putting down roots".[253]

119. It is essential that Children's Centres are given time to prove their worth. Some Centres are not open yet and the majority of those that are open have been in place for less than four years. It would be catastrophic if Children's Centres were not afforded long-term policy stability and security of funding while evaluation is ongoing.

Children's Centres funding

120. Total revenue funding for Children's Centres has increased each year as the programme has expanded. From £371 million in the first year of the Children's Centres rollout (2004), revenue funding is expected to have risen to over £1.1 billion in 2010-11.[254] The Department states that "the Government has committed to fund Children's Centres as part of their long-term strategy."[255] The Secretary of State, Rt Hon Ed Balls MP, told us that funding for Children's Centres is included in the 75% of the Departmental budget which is being protected from cuts until 2013, with increases in line with inflation.[256] No information has, however, been made available about the Sure Start, Early Years and Childcare Grant for the period after March 2011, when it is expected that the ring-fence around Children's Centres funding as it is passed to local authorities will be removed.[257] The National Audit Office reported that the majority of local authorities regard the current level of grant as essential to delivering the main services it is meant to pay for, that is: centre management and administration, family support, qualified teacher input to childcare, drop-in sessions and building maintenance. Significant numbers of local authorities also see the grant as essential or important to the provision of other services that it is not meant to fund, for example childcare.[258]

121. When the ring-fence ends, Dr Margy Whalley told us "it will be interesting to see how much local authorities value their Children's Centres".[259] John Harris, speaking on behalf of the Association of Directors of Children's Services, considered that, in the future, "there will need to be quite a sharp reappraisal, depending on the level of resourcing that is in place, and a judgement about where the major priorities will be".[260] Some respondents to the NAO's survey speculated that local authorities would be likely to prioritise schools and child protection: "They were concerned that Children's Centres had not yet had time to demonstrate impact, and that local authorities might prioritise the more established services that they were more familiar with."[261]

122. The Association of Directors of Children's Services notes that:

Short-term funding cycles, and uncertainty about future funding levels, has hindered the ability of long-term planning of finances and development of sustainable services […] There are concerns about continuing funding after the initial grant expires and in particular whether, in a tight funding settlement, the universal service can be sustained.[262]

Most Service Level Agreements between Children's Centres and their partners will terminate in March 2011, as will contract agreements for charities acting as lead agents for local authorities.[263] Barnardo's reported that there has been a decrease in the numbers of Children's Centres being put out to tender in some regions, and more of those that are put out to tender are being offered only on one-year contracts.[264]

123. 4Children pointed out that, although much service delivery can be achieved by utilising health, education or crime prevention funding streams, core resources are still needed to sustain management, administration, accommodation and outreach costs.[265] Furthermore, such an approach would depend on the funding climate within those other services and their willingness to divert resources to an initiative whose immediate returns may not be obvious.[266] It also assumes that services have resources available to be re-directed; for example, the assumption that a service using rooms in a Centre will be able to pay for that space, when in reality they hold no cashable budget for facilities.[267] Several submissions made to the inquiry have articulated local authorities' concerns about the ongoing maintenance costs of Children's Centre buildings.[268] Some councils are weighing up the merits of charging for services (other than childcare) as a sustainability strategy, exploring whether it can be done without compromising access for priority families.[269]

124. We asked the Minister whether in her view the funding for Children's Centres should continue to be ring-fenced. She responded:

My direct response to that is yes, because it is a protection for the development of the service. However, we are also talking about sustainability and how we bring pots of money, whether it is health or Jobcentre Plus, into that programme to develop it. The important first point—the Government have done this—is to secure the funding for the Sure Start Children's Centres in the continuation of this spending round and into the next. We then need to develop the work around outcomes to be sure that we are seeing the developments that we want. Thirdly, we have to see how we can have financial sustainability by not duplicating across health, Jobcentre Plus or Children's Centre funding, but by bringing it together.[270]

125. We consider that it would be unwise to remove the ring-fence around Children's Centres funding in the short or medium term; putting Centres at the mercy of local vicissitudes would risk radically different models and levels of service developing across the country, with differences out of proportion to the variation in community needs.

126. Local authorities clearly require more reassurance about future funding than they have so far received. Uncertainty in this regard is hampering long term planning and constructive voluntary sector involvement.

143 Ev 1 Back

144 Ev 4 Back

145 Q 387 [Ann Gross] Back

146 Memorandum by the National Audit Office, Sure Start Children's Centres (December 2009), paragraph 1.7 Back

147 DCSF, Statistical First Release 26 (October 2009) Back

148 Audit Commission, Giving children a healthy start (February 2010), p 4 Back

149 Ev 46, 83, 298 Back

150 Qq 133 [Councillor Peppiatt], 277 [Emma Knights], 328; Ev 47, 84, 144, 162, 225 Back

151 Q 133 Back

152 Q 177 Back

153 Ev 317; Qq 138 [Cynthia Knight], 226 [Emma Knights] Back

154 Ev 217, 269, 293 Back