Examination of Witnesses (Questions 37-81)
Q37 Chair: Good morning. It is
lovely to have you with us this morning talking about the spending
review settlement for the Department for Education. Having heard
from representatives of local government, we now hear from the
voluntary sector. As I say, it is a pleasure to have you with
us. I think I'll start with my first question to the last panel:
given the need to tackle the deficit, and given the Government's
stated priorities, does the way the Government are going about
the spending reductions make sense to you? If not, what do you
think they should be doing differently? I think we'll start with
you, Martin.
Martin Narey: I'm very happy to
start. No one doubts the need to make significant reductions in
public spending. We can see what is happening in Ireland at the
moment and we have to avoid going there. I thought the responses
from colleagues in local authorities were quite interesting and
quite professional, in that they did not dispute that need. What
they talked about was the management challenge. It is the speed
of the cuts. Harsh as they are, cuts of this magnitude can be
made, and we will have to make some of them, speaking as someone
who does a lot of work for local authorities. But the speed of
them is very troubling. My No. 1 worry is that local authorities
will take an easy route and simply slash spending on voluntary
organisations, so that we have to suffer redundancy costs, rather
than local authorities themselves. I don't think local authorities
wish to do that, but they may have very little choice.
Q38 Chair: Do you have any evidence
of that happening so far? It is classic in any organisation: if
there is a choice between firing the person you sit next to every
day or cutting by a similar amount the grant to a voluntary group
that may be offering rather more bang for the buck than your esteemed
colleague, the tendency is to cut the person you don't sit beside
every day. Is there any evidence that that is happening?
Martin Narey: There is a very
small bit of evidence. We've lost a very good school in Scotland,
which I think was admired by those who commissioned it, but the
real problem is that we don't know yet. We're dealing with local
authorities; 1 April is nearly upon us, and they haven't yet calculated
exactly what sort of hit they have to take. My worry is that we
will be in turmoil during the last few weeks of the financial
year. That's when local authorities, understandably perhaps, will
want to protect their own staff.
David Seward: We've seen it very
specifically in a local area, based around the cuts to the area-based
grants. There was a double knock-on effect; one was in the grants
they gave to a small, voluntary sector club that we run, and the
other was in the money contracted to the organisation through
the Positive Activities Fund, which was sub-contracted to the
Connexions service to deliver. For two weeks in July, the organisation,
which is in one of our most deprived estates, probably lost two
thirds of its funding in a two-week period. There are some big
examples of the effects.
Q39 Chair: I think the Prime Minister
has pleaded with local authorities not to take the easy route,
but is there anything the Government can do, other than just public
pleading?
Bernadette Duffy: There are some
very welcome messages coming from the Government around the importance
of Sure Start children's centres, and around focusing on child
development and being very clear that it is about child development
and closing the gap for the most disadvantaged. However, some
of the decisions that are being made—I agree with Martin—are
very rapidly in danger of undermining that.
For example, there was the removal last week
of the requirement to provide day care in the most disadvantaged
areas. I can understand that the current arrangement, whereby
eight to six is provided for every family in a disadvantaged area,
is certainly not a good one, and it is not an appropriate use
of resources, but there is a need to keep day care within Sure
Start children's centres in the most disadvantaged areas. Those
are often the very families that we most want to reach. Being
able to offer them that support—for example, children with
child protection—makes a big difference in child development
terms and for the most disadvantaged.
There was the requirement to remove qualified
teachers and early years professionals from children's centres,
which I think was also announced last Tuesday. We know that the
qualifications of the staff have the biggest impact on outcomes
for children, particularly the most disadvantaged, so removing
the requirement to have those qualified staff is a concern at
a time when local authorities are finding funding challenging.
The fact that Sure Start and early years are not ring-fenced,
as schools are, means that there may be a temptation—however
reluctantly—to cut those things within their children's
centres to the detriment of the children.
Q40 Nic Dakin: Welcome. You have
talked, Martin, about the way things are being done having the
potential to create turmoil. Bernadette, you have just said that
some of the loosening might compound that by making vulnerable
things that, in your view, shouldn't be vulnerable. Given that
there is recognition that reductions are needed, how could it
be better managed from now on in? Is there anything that we can
do to improve the management?
Martin Narey: I think there is.
No one doubts the end point that we have to reach over the next
three years, but it's the front-loading of the savings that have
to be made. I don't think it's too late for the Government to
consider whether local authorities need some more time to implement
savings. I'm not saying it would be easy, but in any organisation
you're running—and mine is a big organisation; we run 110
Sure Start centres—if you have been given, for example,
a year's notice, you could drive out costs in the region of 10%
or even 15% from those centres, even though it would hurt. You'd
have to do less. Being asked to do that in February for 1 April
will be impossible, not least because you can't take any advantage
of natural wastage. It's the momentum of the cuts that worries
me, not the end point, which we all acknowledge we have to reach.
Bernadette Duffy: I think we need
to take more time really to think about—from a children's
centres perspective—what we know works best for young children.
I have worked in integrated centres for the last 30 years. I know,
from my experience in the 1980s in very targeted day nurseries,
that that was not a good option for young children. They went
to school at five, and—I think this was the record—one
child managed three minutes before he was expelled. He didn't
even get through assembly. It was not a good way to over-target
services. I think we need to take a little time to make sure we're
not inadvertently returning to the sort of model that didn't do
children any good, particularly the most disadvantaged.
David Seward: There's a sense
of frustration. I sit on several LSPs; we have six unitary authorities
where I work, across the county. In each of those LSPs, there
is a sense of frustration among some members that the statutory
services are generally working in silos to make the cuts. The
private and voluntary sectors are not always included in the decisions
around people, redundancies and other things because they are
very difficult to make. I am not always sure that some of the
private and voluntary, or third sector, organisations are involved
in the full conversation about how the cuts could be made and
how services could be maintained. A lot of the statutory sector
is having those conversations independently.
Q41 Chair: That's a really important
point. Is that your experience, Martin?
Martin Narey: I don't think there
is time for those conversations. For example, we have said to
the Association of Directors of Children's Services that we would
discuss with it, on any contract that it[1]
has with us, what we might need to do to help absorb some of the
pain. A handful have had those discussions, but in the main, we
haven't been able to have them. We are absolutely sure that we
could help—not that it wouldn't hurt, but we could sit down
and talk about how the core service could be delivered for less.
Q42 Chair: There is pressure,
but surely there is the time. If you don't actually engage in
conversation with the person who provides the service on the front
line, that is a neglect of duty, is it not?
Martin Narey: Local authorities
are in the difficult position of not really knowing. It was fascinating
the way two very able directors here were still trying to digest
and interpret what is being said. For example, I simply don't
believe that Sure Start, about which at least two of us here are
gravely concerned, is protected. Ms Munt, you got it absolutely
right. Our calculations are that there is a little bit of leeway
in the early intervention grant—perhaps a few hundred thousand—but
if Sure Start is to be protected, there will be no money for,
for example, family intervention projects. Sure Start funding
will have to be reduced. Frankly, I believe that it could be.
We could maintain the essence of a marvellous initiative if we
were given the time to sit down and discuss how we could do the
same for less.
Q43 Nic Dakin: We heard from local
authority colleagues about their willingness to work—indeed,
their practice in working—with the voluntary sector. Do
you think the capacity is there for the voluntary sector to take
this forward and take some opportunity out of the situation that
we are in?
Martin Narey: I certainly believe
so, and we can help with the need to provide economies. We provide
services cheaper than local authorities themselves can provide
them. Certainly that is the case with Barnardo's, for one very
simple reason: five years ago, we sorted out the pension problems
that still bedevil local authorities. My staff are not on a final
salary or average salary pension scheme, so our costs for the
same social work are significantly lower. We can provide good-quality
services, we can be cheaper, and we can have better reach.
People trust the brand, whether it is Barnardo's
or the Children's Society. People trust the brand above the door,
so we can reach out and pull into services the most disadvantaged.
However, that takes time, and the extent of local authorities'
willingness to commission is very variable. It is very limited
in the north-east, for example, Ms Glass.
Q44 Nic Dakin:
Are there new types of services about which you feel able to have
conversations with local authorities?
David Seward: I think there are
lots of opportunities. We represent a network of voluntary youth
services, and there is a whole range of services that could be
delivered, but there has been an unwillingness to work at the
very local level with us specifically. It is about us filling
a gap, or just sourcing the bits and pieces of external funding
we can get to lever in small external grants. That will make us
a player, but to be a player around the local authority table
is probably more difficult unless you have something very large
to offer. That could be the ability to shake a tin publicly—that
will make you a player around the table.
Q45 Nic Dakin: So it's easier
for large organisations than small ones.
David Seward: They are more attractive,
but time and again, on the local level, they are not always able
to deliver because they don't have the local network. There is
that combination. They are attractive to local councils because
they can bring in additional sources. In Berkshire, probably 80%
of all the money that is raised locally leaves the county. In
terms of our having the ability to access that, our community
foundation estimates that somewhere in the region of £55
million is raised from local giving, but of that £55 million,
probably only about £5 million stays in the local authority
area. For us, as a small charity or organisation, it is almost
impossible to access and to become a big player with the local
authorities unless you have that leveraging to offer them something
additional.
Q46 Neil Carmichael: There's a
key question about capacity, isn't there, and preparing for contracts,
and so forth? The Government have provided some money for that
in the comprehensive spending review for small organisations—or,
indeed, large ones. Do you think that it is the small organisations
that need help with preparing for contracts and so forth?
David Seward: Not necessarily,
no. I think that those who commission the contracts need to understand
what success would look like. It's very easy for a small local
charity to deliver successfully if those who are commissioning
the service understand what success looks like. I am not sure
that the local authorities always understand exactly what success
would look like in a small community, and I think that there is
a big margin between a statutory duty to provide a large-scale
service and something that would make a big difference in a small
community.
In terms of commissioning and our capacity,
if you gave me a five-year deal on a contract and guaranteed the
income, I am going to have the capacity. If you ask me to raise
50% of a contract and then award it on the basis that—well,
it would be difficult for any commercial company to do it. Capacity
only exists in the fact of a commitment to fund, and local authorities
are in a great position, in that they get their money up-front.
No other organisation is in that position, except for local authorities.
If we in the voluntary or third sector did that, we would be in
a great position, and I could keep staff on and invest in their
training and development.
Q47 Neil Carmichael: In terms
of commissioning, you think that it is the local authority that
needs to be more imaginative and responsive to the voluntary sector,
do you?
David Seward: I think it's that
speed. I've been in post for 10 years now, and over that 10 years
we have been preparing for commissioning in one way, shape or
form. We have had different capacity grants and we've grown probably
from a £60,000 organisation 10 years ago to a £1.2 million
organisation now. We have capacity, we have HR, we have all those
systems in place, but we don't access those local contracts unless
we can lever in significant national funds. So that is our capacity.
Our capacity has got to be that we bring a value to the delivery.
Q48 Neil Carmichael: You've obviously
got a relationship with Berkshire—and no other authority.
David Seward: Berkshire is six
local authorities.
Q49 Neil Carmichael: All right.
Okay. So you've got six local authorities within Berkshire that
you deal with. Can you compare them? Are there some that are less
good or better than others?
David Seward: Chalk and cheese—it
really is. There are some examples of local authorities that are
really trying to engage, and engage well, and they are really
putting some processes in. Voluntary sector organisations across
those local authorities would have various different experiences.
However, there are some local authorities that would just completely
shut up shop. Our organisation covers the whole of the country;
as clubs and a youth organisation, we are part of a national network.
Others would have the same experiences—that when the budget
gets tight the door will be closed because it is not a statutory
service.
Q50 Neil Carmichael: So there
is obviously a lot of variety in Berkshire, and that is only one
county, presumably.
David Seward: It was a county.
Q51 Neil Carmichael: Yes. I'm
from Gloucestershire, where we have seven authorities. What I
am driving at here is this: how would you see changes being made
in procurement and commissioning to try to get a more equal playing
field, or to improve local authorities that need to be improved?
What measures do you think should be implemented?
Chair: May I interject? Where does it
come from? Is it due to a key member of personnel further down
the organisation, who took an interest and happened to view the
world in a way that works well with you? Or is it from the top?
Martin Narey: It's primarily political
in local authorities. Some local authorities have embraced commissioning.
The quality of the commissioning and the quality of the contract
management is still variable, but it's been improving. Some local
authorities have been very resistant to commissioning. Barnado's
runs across the UK, and England is now very different to both
Scotland and Wales in the extent of commissioning. Politicians
have to give the lead. I think that they will be forced into recognising
that they can maintain services by more commissioning.
Q52 Neil Carmichael: So it's a
councillor and political issue, rather than a capacity and officer
competence issue.
Martin Narey: There's an issue
of capacity in being able to run commissioning well, but in my
opinion, the lead mainly comes from local authorities. If you
wish, I could send the Committee a note about the variation that
we find around the country.
Neil Carmichael: That would be extremely
useful—I am speaking for us all here.
Q53 Chair: Is it a left-right
thing? Are you a form of privatisation to some people?
Martin Narey: It's a bit more
complex than that, but the brief answer is yes.
David Seward: It's a purchaser-and-provider
situation. The current commissioner is potentially a provider
of services. If the voluntary or third sector wishes to tender,
it is a combination of whether we make redundancies within our
sector to fund that. There is some sympathy for the difficult
decisions the local authority has, but it is not always based
on need. They are processing a service that potentially means
the end of their own departments. That is not really a comfortable
place for them to be.
Q54 Neil Carmichael: Two quick
questions. We have identified the variations between local services.
The Coalition Government think that by forcing transparency and
local accountability, we will drive improvements where they are
necessary and that the democratic process will kick out councillors
who are not doing their jobs properly. Do you think that will
work, or do we need something else?
David Seward: There is an assumption
that councillors fully understand what's going on.
Q55 Neil Carmichael: Is that assumption
based on something faulty?
David Seward: I think it is an
assumption based on the amount of information and data that are
being fired at councillors at a very quick pace. The assumption
on one of our projects is that it is taking a 5% piecemeal cut.
The reality is that it is taking a cut of nearly 70%, but the
councillors don't know that. They can't keep up to speed because
things are happening at such a high rate. It is difficult for
everybody, but it comes down to the sheer speed and being able
to see what is happening. Transparency is okay, but if you throw
it in with tens of thousands of pieces of information at the same
time, nobody can pick the wheat from the chaff. That is the problem.
Martin Narey: I don't share that
view. It is something of a caricature of local councils. I find
that they have a much greater grip on the provision of services.
They are struggling with immense problems, but I do not find that
at all.
Q56 Neil Carmichael: One last
question. From my experience of procurement by local councils,
they sometimes have a project to procure that is new to them and
of which they have no experience, so they have to set it all up,
get consultants in and so on. That is obviously not quite the
case in this field because they do it more often. I would have
thought that this point relates to your organisation, David, but
not necessarily yours, Martin. Should we be encouraging local
councils to improve their procurement by setting up some sort
of procurement offices themselves to build up that capacity?
Martin Narey: Nearly all local
authorities are doing that and procurement expertise has increased
substantially. However, the process is frighteningly complex.
I don't share David's views about smaller organisations being
more sensitive to local needs, and I could demonstrate that not
to be the case.
Q57 Chair: You would say that,
wouldn't you?
Martin Narey: But I am willing
to demonstrate that to any member of the Committee who wants to
visit any of my projects and tell me that they are not locally
embedded. I do have immense sympathy with small organisations
over the procurement process—the paperwork that has to be
filled in is sufficient to intimidate any small organisation—but
procurement expertise is improving. The problem is that you might
have somebody who last year was procuring a waste management system,
and is procuring children's services this year.
Q58 Neil Carmichael: That's what
I'm getting at. What worries me is that we have procurement systems
that seem to be applied to all sorts of projects. The expertise
and knowledge about those projects isn't necessarily sufficient.
I think that there are a few nodding heads.
Bernadette Duffy: I'm at a maintained
nursery school that is a children's centre, and we work closely
with Coram, one of the oldest children's charities in the country.
I think that there is an issue. We do know in children's centres
about what works. We have a good evidence base now; we have the
EPPE research project—on the effective provision of pre-school
education—and we know what makes a difference. The people
procuring it don't necessarily have all that information. There
is a need to make sure that what we're procuring is in the best
interests of the children. We should not be thinking, "Is
it the maintained sector or is it the voluntary sector?"
but, "Who in this locality can do this job best?" That
is what the local authority needs to be able to do, based on the
evidence of what works and what's going to work for the children
and families in the area, and not getting into competitions between
different sectors.
Q59 Neil Carmichael:
So, in summary, we need to look at procurement at a local level.
Bernadette Duffy: We do.
Q60 Charlotte
Leslie: I have a very quick question, based on something that
Neil said, and it goes to the heart of localism accountability.
In your experience, who runs councils: the councillors or the
officers? Is there a trend between good councils and bad councils
as to who's in charge?
Chair: Bernadette, deal with that poisoned
chalice.
Bernadette Duffy: I work in Camden
and we have a lovely council. We have highly committed councillors,
and the council is making decisions about the children's centre
budget at the moment—I'm going to keep saying that very
loudly. I think that in the best councils there is a good relationship
between the two parties, with neither leading. It is the officers
making sure that the councillors have the information to make
the decisions that they have to make—and in the current
climate those decisions are sometimes very difficult and unpleasant—and
it is councillors who listen respectfully to the officers' views
but also make sure that they get out and about in the local community,
in our case in the King's Cross area, to find out what's actually
working and what that community needs, so that when they are faced
with that difficult task of deciding what to save and what goes,
they can feel confident that they are making the best decisions.
David Seward: I think that I agree.
With us, there are six local authorities and every one is different,
but some of the best are those with councillors that work very,
very hard—and they need to work harder. I don't think that
the council has ever visited some of the local groups that we
deal with, and it is still making decisions about them. That I
find a bit disappointing—that things are based on an officer-led
rather than a councillor-led decision. I appreciate that there
are some difficulties, but that is not in general. In general,
the majority are quite good.
Martin Narey: It's councillors,
and in my experience the partnership between councillors and members
of local authorities often compares favourably with the partnership
between Ministers and civil servants in central Government.
Q61 Chair: But famously, from
"Yes Minister" and the rest of it, we recognise the
civil service as protecting itself and doing its best to manipulate
Ministers for its own interest—producer interest—rather
than for the consumer interest. Do you have any insight into how
we can better encourage councillors to represent their electors
and not the people who just work for the council?
Martin Narey: Obviously there
is a tension between local authority councillors and members,
just as there is between Ministers and civil servants, and the
counter of your description of the civil service is a civil service
that tries to retain some continuity and to keep Ministers focused
on long-term problems, as ministerial officers change very quickly.
I don't work locally, but when I visit services I meet countless
councillors—particularly I might say in Wales, where there
is a greater supply of councillors because there are many more
local authorities—and I see a very considerable presence
of councillors at our services, and them visiting them frequently
and taking a real interest in them.
Q62 Damian Hinds: We were talking
a moment ago about the complexities of contracting, and Bernadette
was talking about a knowledge these days of what works. So, payment
by results—discuss.
Martin Narey: I would welcome
payment by results, and we have been saying to both central Government
and local authorities for some time that we'd like to be paid
by results. It is sometimes very difficult to do that, and there
is no perfect way of doing it, but I think that there are a number
of ways. Specifically with Sure Start centres, I have suggested
to Michael Gove that there should be some incentivising, and that
part of the contractual payment should be dependent on Sure Start
centres demonstrating that they are getting the hardest-to-reach
families there. Sure Start is fantastic, but the notion that everyone
who needs it would push their buggy through that front door is
flawed. All of us who run centres need to do more to demonstrate
that the families who most need them, but don't come, are there
frequently.
Bernadette Duffy: We need to be
focused on outcomes and results because that's what we're here
for—for the children. Payment by results is interesting,
because there is a risk that you measure what's easy to measure
rather than what's most important. For a number of years, I was
involved in early excellence centres, where we had a massive evaluation
programme that was effective and able to show that every pound
spent in the early excellence centres—the precursors of
children's centres—saved £4 later on in the system.
But it was highly expensive funding that evaluation to get that
level of accuracy and rigour.
We need to keep the balance of making sure that
the results that we measure are the ones that are genuinely important.
I would argue that our focus now in children's centres is on child
development. We are not simply counting the number of children
and families who come to us, or how many of those are disadvantaged,
but what difference we have made for them and can we see the gap
closing in terms of the foundation stage profile or its equivalent.
We also need to ensure that the outcomes are
then in a system where it does not become so time consuming to
measure the outcomes that we do not offer the services—that
is another experience that we have had—and that that ties
in with any framework that Ofsted has.
For small organisations, as David has pointed
out, there is the problem of up-front costings, so I do not think
that basing everything—all the funding—on results
would be at all beneficial. We need to reflect the fact that there
needs to be some up-front funding.
Martin Narey: We have to take
account of not just the children who already come to Sure Start
children's centres. David Cameron was exaggerating, but when he
talked about sharp-elbowed mums squeezing out other parents, it
wasn't untruthful. My view is that we have to be tasked and paid
for results on the basis of making sure that every child who needs
support in a given area is getting into those centres. That is
not always happening. Some centres are fantastic; others are much
less effective.
Bernadette Duffy: And we have
20% referrals for the most disadvantaged children to make sure
that that happens.
In respect of the middle classes, I have sympathy
with some, because some in the middle classes don't have sharp
elbows, but have issues and need support. But there are ways of
making sure that children's centres reach the most disadvantaged.
In Camden, we have 20% top-slicing to make sure that goes to child
protection—the high-priority cases. We have also made sure
that we use our outreach workers and family support workers—not
having them sitting in the centres, but getting them out into
the community and making sure that the most disadvantaged are
reached.
We open on Saturdays and on evenings. We trawl
the shopping centres and Coram's Fields to ensure that if anybody
out there doesn't know about us, it is not through want of trying.
Q63 Damian Hinds: I suppose in any payment-by-results
set-up there is a tension between having a simple and transparent
system on the one hand and a complex system that captures all
the subtleties on the other. In this Committee, we have on more
than one occasion discussed the contrast between five-plus GCSEs
at C-plus and contextual value added. Contextual value added is
intellectually far more satisfying, but nobody who has come to
this Committee has ever spontaneously used it as a measure for
a school's performance, whereas everybody understands five-plus
C-plus.
Bernadette, you were talking about all the work
you do to ensure that there is inclusion, and Martin said how
important that is, but that is not in itself a result. You, Bernadette,
quite rightly identified that it is the value added—the
difference you make—that counts. But how on earth do you
measure that at that time? Whenever I've asked people, including
a gentleman who came from your organisation a couple of weeks
ago, about the real robust evidence base that says, "This
type of thing works and this type of thing doesn't", it seems
that it is hard to come by. Contemporaneously with what you're
doing, it's even harder. So, payment by results—what results?
Bernadette Duffy: We at Thomas
Coram are lucky that our chair of children and curriculums committee
is Iram Siraj-Blatchford, who organised the EPPE research, so
we have a slight advantage. We track children from when they come
into the centre. We look at their level of development and talk
with the parents about their understanding of key areas of development,
such as language and communication, and personal, social, emotional
and physical development, and about their ability, connections
and attachments, and we use that to track children's attainment
and progress so that we can say, on entry to our kindergarten
at three-years-old—in the term after their third birthday—approximately
33% of the children are below expectations for their age group
at that point, but by the time they leave us to go on to primary
school, 98% are reaching or exceeding expectations for their age.
You can do it, and you can do it in a way that's not bureaucratic
and is child-centred and child development-focused. Hopefully,
the review of the EYFS will help us to do that in far more centres.
Martin Narey: We do that for each
individual child. It's got to be done for each individual child;
where they started and where you reach with them.
David Seward: There are some quite
significant longitudinal studies around the value and concept
of youth work that stem back in the '60s and '70s, which tend
to be disregarded because they're historic. But actually the point
of principle is that young people have to be engaged for a period
of time in their leisure time and to do that voluntarily. So,
there is the whole assessment process of when they come and when
they leave, but that will never be fixed over a six-week period.
Young people can be measured in terms of their ability to respond
and their robustness to deal with lots of different situations,
but they would need those situations to be created for them in
that time they were engaged.
Having the opportunities to experience new cultures,
recreation and those sorts of things will give you a five-year
outcome. But to give you a test now of what would achieve the
outcome of reducing crime, well, I could do that. I could show
you that by holding a disco on a Saturday night we would reduce
crime. The longitudinal effect on those young people would take
three to four years to show—to make them more robust.
We would prove with evidence that if you encourage
young people to be happier, to feel that they belong and that
they have the opportunity to succeed, it makes them far more robust.
We deal with a lot of young people and children who have never,
at the age of 13 or 14, experienced success in any way, shape
or form. To turn that around, after a period of 10 to 13 years,
is really very difficult.
There have to be the flexibilities and, yes,
the very tangible A to Cs, which I accept, but the value added
can be taken in terms of youth centres and everything else as
well. We can demonstrate value to you is what we are saying.
Q64 Damian Hinds: I totally accept
everything you say, by the way, and I recognise that time series
studies show that, of course, if you do good work with young people,
they are less likely to become criminals. However, that is not
the same as being able to say that this week or this year, looking
at this organisation versus that organisation and the two different
sorts of programmes they are running with two different sets of
young people, I will pay this one £x and that one £y,
which is what payment by results is. Given that, isn't it inevitable
that you end up with some sort of score card that involves assumptions
about the sorts of things you are doing and how you can predict
what effect they will have down the line? If so, who is best placed
to draw up the score card, because the definition of what is going
to count becomes so fundamental to, basically, who gets paid what?
David Seward: For us, it would
be really important to understand what the local success looks
like. Even in a small county like Berkshire, across those six
areas, the local success would be slightly different for young
people. A lot of young people in some of these estates would never
ever move off them, so they assume it's a bit like a ghetto. The
success might be that you get them to understand a wider range
of concepts, and it is the commissioner's job to understand what
that need is, right at the very grass-roots level. It might be
as simple and as subtle as giving them a varied range of experiences
and counting those numbers. That might be all that's needed. There
doesn't always need to be a really sophisticated formula for local
remedies. To try and force one particular formula on a local need
is going to end up as a failure. We have to look at those local
issues—a rural issue is completely different to an urban
one.
Martin Narey: And you have to
be cautious, you have to put your foot in the water gently and
you have to start slowly but, going back to Sure Start centres
and using the factors that Bernadette mentioned, I think that
you could measure the progress of a whole population of children
in a given year. There are some proxies. You do not always need
to use outcomes. The evidential base for parenting courses is
quite remarkable, so we know that a very good proxy would be,
if in a particular Sure Start centre we got x number of parents
through parenting courses, that the parenting in that area would
be improved. That is beyond doubt. There are lots of proxies that
one can use.
Q65 Damian Hinds: Oh dear, that's
not a causal link. It might be the case that you have parenting
classes that are brilliant and therefore have a great effect,
but that does not mean that by putting another 100 people in parenting
classes you will have a positive effect.
Martin Narey: I beg to differ;
I think it does. For example, the evidential base for Webster-Stratton,
which is one parenting course, is very considerable, and it shows
considerable improvement in parenting skills across a range of
factors, based on long-term research. It is perfectly reasonable
to consider that if you deliver those services to another cohort
of young parents, you will achieve similar improvements.
Q66 Pat Glass: Following Damian's
point, given that the purpose of Sure Start is to reduce the gaps
between the most able and the less able, and given that there
is shed loads of money going into this and has been over a number
of years, should those things not actually be harsher? The outcomes
for children from the richest and the poorest in your areas at
Key Stage 2 and Key Stage 4; a reduction in children who are killed
or seriously hurt in road accidents between seven and 11; a reduction
in the number of suicides of young men between 16 and 19—should
you not be judged on those things?
Bernadette Duffy: I think there
is a link with that, but I think you are then negating the role
of the schools that the children are going on to.
Q67 Pat Glass: But you contribute
to this.
Bernadette Duffy: Yes, we hopefully
contribute.
Q68 Pat Glass: There is lots of
money going into this, so should you not play your part?
Bernadette Duffy: And we are playing
our part, because we can show, certainly in Camden, that the investment
in Sure Start children's centres has led to improved outcomes
for all children at the end of foundation stage profile. The gap
between the most advantaged and the less advantaged has decreased
significantly over that time. So that, I think, is very much calling
us to account and making sure that the money that has been invested
is making a difference.
Q69 Pat Glass: Martin, should
you be judged on these very harsh outcomes?
Martin Narey: In part. Sure Start
centres aren't the only determining factor for some of those things
that you have indicated there. I think the evidence of the impact
of Sure Start is now very concrete indeed. The great fear over
Sure Start, although I don't think it's borne out, is that we
might follow the experience of the USA, which abandoned Head Start—or
more or less abandoned Head Start—before they realised just
how much it had done, among a number of things, to reduce criminality
in adults. Sure Start is there for the long haul. Actually, it's
still in its early days, but all the evidence suggests that it
is extremely effective, and if it can further improve reach—and
the evidence shows that's got better, but there's further to go—it
could be more effective.
Q70 Chair: It can be extremely
effective. I have no doubt that Bernadette's Sure Start centre
is extremely effective. I have visited centres and it is quite
clear that there is a demonstrable difference between one centre
and another. Often, the longer-standing one that has really built
up the expertise is so much more able to reach out to the hard
to reach, for instance, because they have learnt how to do it.
Bernadette Duffy: But we do have
the EPPE research project, which is now the EPPE children. I don't
know if the Committee is familiar with the EPPE research and we
probably haven't got time to go into it, but it is the longest
longitudinal study that has looked at children's experiences in
pre-school and now followed those children up until 16 years old.
It is showing that those children who went to what were the precursors
to children's centres—they were called integrated centres
in those days—that had qualified teachers and were part
of maintained nursery schools are doing better in all the outcomes
at 16 than those children who didn't. So we do have some very
strong evidence, as Martin says, that this way of working with
young children—the children's centre model—does have
those long-term effects.
Q71 Damian Hinds: But there are
also longitudinal studies which show that it is the quality of
nursery teaching that makes the difference.
Bernadette Duffy: It is.
Q72 Damian Hinds: And that is
not quite the same thing as saying if you put more people through
Sure Start—do you see what I mean?
Martin Narey: This was kind of
what I was trying get at.
Q73 Chair: If
we keep Sure Start open but it just doesn't have the same
number of quality teachers, or whatever, because it is a political
promise in a clunky governmental and political world, isn't it
in fact possible that we keep the form but not the real substance?
Bernadette Duffy: We need to keep
the ingredients. We need to keep the ingredients we know work.
You are quite right: the qualified teachers were the things that
made a difference. In the American research as well, it was qualified
teachers who were making the difference. So if you can get the
best of all worlds, you can get the parenting support and the
high-quality early education, and then you will have the outcomes
we want for all children.
Q74 Chair: Who should be commissioning
and over what period? Payment by results. Probably for some of
my Labour colleagues, that would be a nightmare rather than a
dream, but my dream would be when we had an evidence base so strong
that some consortium of Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse came and
raised £1 billion and invested it because they were paid,
so that at the age of—pick an age—23, there were these
outcomes for the young people in that area. They were going to
make sure that there were no NEETs and that the percentage of
people who went into higher education and the general contentment
increased. That way, you would have an evidence base so strong
that people, purely driven by profit, could raise billions of
pounds, invest it in services right the way through in order to
just absolutely slash the numbers of people who end up in prison
and the number of people who end up with mental health problems,
and they would be commissioning not because of either political
imperative—anyway, sorry, I'm talking too long. Who could
commission? How could we create a system that genuinely delivered
outcomes for young people and invested on the basis of evidence
rather than political whim?
David Seward: I think there are
some really good examples being created. There are some really
interesting departments that are starting to get to that point.
They are within the local authority, but they are almost cocooned
or bubbled, and that feels a little bit more of a comfortable
place. They understand the breadth and the width. They have that
social responsibility rather than capital, but they are independent,
almost, towards the Department or the local authority. I'd feel
really uncomfortable if the commissioning officer was the head
of the Department. If the commissioning officer is part of the
Department for Education, they're naturally going to have an allegiance,
but if the commissioning department is independent of the local
authority, to me that seems a little more comfortable and a little
bit easier for us to manage.
Q75 Chair: Could they do it? One
reason it's not working is that local authorities, one way or
another, become interested in the producer interest as opposed
to the consumer interest.
David Seward: I think they could,
but there needs to be some real test about, first, whether they
understand what success looks like, and secondly, whether they're
independent and not biased toward their own department. If those
rules were put in place, I'd be really comfortable with the local
authority being the right people to do it.
Q76 Chair: We probably need to
move on. If you have any further thoughts on this, the Government
have said they're interested in outcomes as opposed to process-led
targets. If your organisations have any opportunity to contribute
to that and help develop a more genuine commissioning that spends
money and allocates capital on the basis of need and evidence
rather than, as too often happens, bureaucratic or political convenience,
that would be very helpful.
Q77 Tessa Munt: I'd like to go
back to Sure Start. If we're going to have a core universal offer
nationally and we're still going to target families on a very
individual basis, I wonder whether you have any ideas? I want
to pick up on the idea of what Sure Start might be dropping. What
might it not be doing that it's doing at the moment? You've talked
about expansion by outreach and so on. I expect this is probably
for the two of you, Martin and Bernadette. Do you have any ideas
about what one might not do?
Bernadette Duffy: I've been involved
in Sure Start from when they were local programmes to when they
became children's centres to now. I'd be a bit concerned about
the refocusing of Sure Start to its original objectives, because
some of those were not at all good or evidence-based, and we spent
a lot of money on Sure Start teddy bears and mugs, which I think
was possibly not money well spent.
It seems to me that if it's about child development
and outcomes for children, we need to make sure that at the heart
of every children's centre is a strong focus on child development,
whether that's directly through work with children, through work
with parents or through multi-agency work. We need then to be
very critical of the other things which are lovely to do but cannot
necessarily show that they're having that development effect.
Things like baby yoga are lovely and a delightful way to spend
a morning, but unless we can show that it leads to improved outcomes
for children, I would be reluctant for us to be using Sure Start
money on that. On baby massage, interestingly, we've got some
research at Thomas Coram that shows a link between that and attachment,
particularly in depressed mothers, so I would argue that there
is a place for that, in moderation.
On music, again, we have strong evidence at
Thomas Coram, because the children have been involved in music
programmes, done very cheaply—one music person reaches 55
people in one morning—that seems to be good value for money,
and leads to improved outcomes in letters, sounds and phonological
awareness at five. We have strong evidence of what works. I would
drop those things for which we don't have strong evidence that
they work.
Q78 Tessa Munt: As far as I can
see, we've got rid of the teddy bears and the mugs, and you've
given a brilliant reason why we should keep a lot of—
Q79 Chair: Name those services.
Tessa Munt: It is difficult, I understand,
to pick on the things you've got to drop.
Bernadette Duffy: Little Kickers.
I can't see a connection between funding Little Kickers and improved
outcomes for children.
Martin Narey: I think it's not
just a question of what we might drop. I am not a front-line practitioner;
Bernadette knows more about that than me. I think it's a matter
of how we can deliver what seems to work at the moment less expensively.
I think you can do that and that the voluntary sector, again,
is well placed to do that. We can make greater use of volunteers.
I have 8,000 staff, but I have 16,000[2]
volunteers who work for us in Barnardo's in all our ventures.
Actually, volunteers bring the community into our projects in
a way that nothing can better.
Although I absolutely support Bernadette on
professionalisation of staff in terms of supervision, I actually
think there's a lot of scope to use non-qualified staff, not just
in children's centres but across our whole range of projects.
Some of the staff I admire most don't have formal professional
qualifications; a lot of them are mothers who've returned to work
after bringing up their own children. They're incredibly effective.
Even in some of the most sensitive areas, such as safeguarding,
they're incredibly effective. We can probably do more to build
a work force who are just as effective but perhaps less expensive,
and volunteers, of course, are the least expensive of all.
Q80 Nic Dakin: Is your answer
to the challenge that we face basically a less expensive labour
force? That has another set of issues in terms of the way in which
the labour force drives other things, hasn't it?
Martin Narey: It would be foolish
of me to say that, in any of the services that we run, we couldn't
do things more cheaply if we had to. It doesn't mean that some
things don't have to go at the margins, but if I had to say to
this Committee that I could run 110 Sure Start centres and retain
the integrity of Sure Start on 90% of the overall budget, I would
find a way of doing that. Sure Start was extremely well funded.
I hasten to add that Bernadette's centre is renowned throughout
the country, which is why she turns up here fairly frequently.
I absolutely agree, Chair. I am honest enough and was shouted
down at the Tory party conference the year before last for daring
to admit that some of our centres weren't as good as others in
terms of things such as opening hours, weekend opening and getting
dads in. We can be driven a little bit harder and commissioners
can be harder contract managers. It is not just about giving us
a contract and saying, "Get on with it." It is about
managing us quite hard, and I think we could drive down costs.
Bernadette Duffy: The other way
we have done it in Camden is to think about clustering our children's
centres, so rather than having individual children's centres,
duplicating things and, in an urban area, having them quite close
together, we think about the locality as a whole. We are part
of the south Camden locality, and three children's centres—one
a voluntary sector provider, us as a nursery school and another
children's centre—work together to share resources, so that
we don't each do the same thing. We make sure that we make effective
use of resources. That is one of the things that we learnt from
the previous experience. We had a situation before where every
children's centre was trying to do everything in the core offer
and we were duplicating and, in some cases, it felt like we were
fighting over families, so we needed to get far more effective
in looking at what south Camden needed and who was best placed
to deliver that, with good outcomes but also at the best cost,
which I agree with Martin about. There are opportunities to make
much better use of resources.
Martin Narey: Commissioning groups
is really important. A single children's centre could be torpedoed
by one spell of maternity leave. You really need to try to have
groups that can support one another.
Bernadette Duffy: Yes.
Q81 Pat Glass: One final and quick
question. Early intervention is about intervening in the early
years, but it is also about intervening before a crisis occurs.
Given that the early intervention grant is largely going to be
taken up with Sure Start, what will happen to things such as mental
health in teenagers, families in crisis and drug and alcohol misuse,
when they become a crisis later on?
Martin Narey: I think it's very
troubling and I worry very much. The one area you haven't mentioned
is our family intervention projects in the north-east, which have
been transformational for some families who had become the scourge
of their neighbours on the estates on which they live. These projects
are very hard hitting and have conditions and sanctions on the
back of them, but their ability and capacity to fundamentally
change some of the most difficult families, where there are often
four or five children who are all going to grow up and drift into
criminality, is outstanding. That is just one area that, as I
look at the maths, I can see being squeezed very badly in the
next couple of years.
Bernadette Duffy: We are looking
at children's centres and, obviously, I want them to be protected.
We need to think about not stopping at five but thinking that,
if we have built relationships with families in a community or
in a cluster up until the children are five, we should be in a
good position to base other services in and develop them from
the children's centre to support children into later life, so
that we perhaps become more flexible in terms of what the children's
centre itself does to try to address some of those problems. I
completely share your concerns about what is going to happen for
those very vulnerable young people.
Chair: Thank you all very much indeed
for giving evidence to us this morning.
1 We don't contract directly
with ADCS but with individual local authorities. The discussions
we have had have been with DCS in local authorities. Back
2
Witness correction: over 14,000 Back
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