Education CommitteeWritten evidence submitted by Action for Children

Executive summary

1. Action for Children’s vision is that children are able to make the best start in life.

2. Vulnerable children need effective, accessible, community-based interventions in their local children’s centres. This is not about looking back to Sure Start but rather looking forward to a new model where effective early help is accessible over the long term.

3. Over the past three years Action for Children has refined the support we offer through our network of children’s centres, based upon extensive evaluation and outcomes tracking so that we know what works:

Promoting early language development and school readiness.

Targeting the most vulnerable and maximising reach, including investing in outreach.

Providing evidence-based parenting programmes, delivered by skilled practitioners.

Developing centres as the key to community-based networks, accessible and relevant to local needs.

Building partnerships with health services and NHS professionals.

4. The effective work delivered in children’s centres must be protected. This is particularly vital in the difficult economic environment where preventative services are being squeezed while parents are under increased economic pressure.

5. There has been much debate about the future of the Early Intervention Grant (EIG). We welcomed its introduction as a way of focusing spending on prevention and fear that reducing the fund and shifting it into the general pot will halt the progress that has been made.

6. Looking ahead beyond the spending review, we would like assurances that EIG allocations remain visible and traceable year-on-year. It is essential that there is an identifiable early intervention funding stream beyond 2014–15.

Action for Children

7. Action for Children is committed to helping the most vulnerable children and young people in the UK break through injustice, deprivation and inequality, so they can achieve their full potential. We help children, young people and their families through nearly 500 services across the UK, including over 200 children’s centres across England.

Core purpose of children’s centres, how has this evolved and is different from the original design and purpose of Sure Start

8. The core purpose of children’s centres has evolved. We have adapted our practice, consolidating key elements of effective practice into a new model, which is evidence-based but also offers flexibility to address local needs.

9. Our golden threads of effective practice are:

Challenging the impact of poverty on children.

Supporting early communication and language development.

Promoting physical health and wellbeing.

Promoting emotional well being and resilience.

Promoting community participation.

The effectiveness and impact of children’s centres to date, including the role of Ofsted inspections

10 During 2011–12, our children’s centres achieved the following:

A positive impact in reducing the risk of physical, sexual or emotional abuse of a child; reducing concerns in 95% of cases where this was an issue.

78% of children improved their communication skills.

All our children’s centres achieved satisfactory or above Ofsted grades.

90% were rated good or outstanding by Ofsted in their work to meet the needs of service users and improve the outcomes for children.

11 Action for Children commissioned King’s College London (20111) to evaluate the impact our children’s centres have on outcomes for the most vulnerable children. The research showed we were effective in improving outcomes, with the greatest improvements in:

Parents/carers’ capacity to support their child’s health.

Parents/carers’ ability to cope with difficulties.

Improvement to the child’s ability to contribute to the learning environment.

12 The research highlighted our success in reaching people who do not normally access services; working in partnership (especially with health services); and, reducing stigma: “Action for Children children’s centres have the potential to act as a gateway, and in some cases one-stop-shop, for the early intervention which we know can improve outcomes, especially health outcomes, for children.” Our children’s centres model constitutes a timely and effective way of delivering services in a period of resource challenge.

13 We believe that further work is needed to clarify and communicate the locus of Ofsted’s control in measuring early help and the criteria against which authorities’ performance is measured. Given the Government’s ambition to support early intervention without introducing a new duty on authorities, Ofsted could act as a more effective driver towards early intervention approaches.

The range of services and activities provided at children’s centres, their desired outcomes and whether/how these differ from family centres, early Sure Start local programmes and early years settings

14 Our centres have evolved as community assets. We can host the local dentist, link to the local religious centre or offer birth registration; and in the evening host relationship guidance and counselling services. Our teams consist of community development workers, social workers, early year’s workers, speech and language therapists, health visitors, benefit and debt advisors and job centre plus workers.

15 Flexible, locality-led services complement the core offer. It is this rich mix of evidence-based interventions; universal early year’s provision; and, community resource that makes children’s centres effective and provides a vision for these services going forward.

How to define and measure good practice in family and parenting support and outreach. Including the effectiveness of Government’s payment by results trials, and what measures of child development and school readiness might be used

16 The full impact of the payment by results (PbR) trials in children’s centres is yet to be seen; to be effective they will need to support stability in the provision of effective services. PbR needs to be evaluated against improvements in child outcomes rather than success in meeting policy imperatives or process measures. We are disappointed by the limited scope of the evaluation, especially as reward systems have not been fully introduced, neither has the impact of PbR on different providers been adequately measured.

17 The components in the core offer provide a useful benchmark for measuring good practice: maintaining the balance between child, parenting and community indicators. We need to resource the measurement outcomes (rather than outputs) but recognise that this will need to be an iterative process, with indicators used to measure progress along the way.

18 We welcome the DfE and DH’s commitment to explore the integrated health and early years review at two to 2.5 years. We would like to see the integrated review repeated at age five. There needs to be an emphasis on knowing the baseline assessment for each individual child and clarity around who is responsible for carrying out the review.

How to increase the use of evidence-based early intervention in children’s centres

19 There is an increased inclusion of evidence-based parenting programmes (EBPs) in children’s centre contracts pointing to the impact of the Allen review.

20 Over the last year 1,302 parents received EBPs from Action for Children. The most common programmes were “Incredible Years”, “Triple P” and “Strengthening Families”. These courses have led to better family communication and problem solving, reduction in child conduct problems, improvements in parenting, and improved child behaviour in education settings.

21 Last year we looked at which programmes were most effective in which circumstances. The “Incredible Years” and “Triple P” were effective in achieving behavioural change with many families, but for some of the most hard to engage parents these programmes were less effective. Programmes aimed at facilitating “cognitive” rather than “behavioural” change, such as the “Strengthening Families” programme were more effective with these families. We have recorded significant success in using these programmes to reach out to families, engage them and develop trust so that they can later successfully undertake behaviour change programmes.

22 The use of effective outreach is also crucial to make best use of the considerable resources that have been invested into setting up EBPs. The British Psychological Society report2, recommends the adoption of a framework for ensuring that evidence-based parenting programmes are socially inclusive to increase take up among socially disadvantaged groups who are often hard to recruit and retain. It argues that drop-out rates should be considered when reviewing effectiveness: “With low-income families, targeted parenting programmes report higher retention rates if they are offered following the provision of a universal approach in the context of a local stepped care system that begins with universal approaches and progresses to a targeted approach only when required. Universal programmes can assist in identifying parents for whom a targeted programme may later be relevant and helpful especially in low-income communities.”

23 Ensuring that programmes are run to fidelity, with resources invested in implementation, makes the greatest difference to the success of EBPs. A recent study, commissioned by the DfE3, notes: “To maximise the possibilities for the return on this investment, in the form of positive outcomes for children, young people and their families, those commissioning these services should ensure that a careful, well resourced implementation plan is followed”. Public and voluntary sectors can struggle with the effective delivery of EBPs. One way of bridging this would be to make available funding to evaluate programmes nearer to the gold standard, particularly as the total cost of getting an innovation to, and through, a randomised control trial can be up to £1 million. We would like to pioneer a model for a fully evidence-based children’s centre, but need support to realise this ambition.

24 Over and above programme fidelity, we recognise that human relationships are core to the delivery of effective services, including EBPs. In 2010 we commissioned independent research4 to articulate how to develop effective relationships with vulnerable parents who may be reluctant to take up services. We wanted to see how these relationships make a difference for children and young people.

25 From the research we developed a framework that identifies the key qualities, experience, skills and knowledge that are essential to developing effective professional relationships. To be effective practitioners need to be: child-focused; warm, respectful and sensitive; action-focused; able to engage and build trust; and offer both support and challenge. We also looked at the organisational qualities necessary to support this work, identifying the following approaches in our services that worked well: consistency in approach; flexible and non-prescriptive delivery; and encouraging other services to meet their responsibilities

How to strengthen integrated working between health, social care and education as part of a multi-agency early help offer, including how to improve information sharing and the proposal for children’s centres to have a “named social worker”

26 We offer centre-based opportunities for local health professionals and are successful in engaging community-based midwives, health visitors and consolidating links with GPs.

27. We support early language development, a key factor in improving social mobility and school readiness. Seventy eight% of children in our children’s centres improved their communication skills.

28 Action for Children is participating in the Children’s Centre Social Worker Pilot. The pilot is based at our Ashington Centre and involves trialling a Children’s Centre Social Worker (CCSW) who coordinated services, especially around safeguarding, to prevent the escalation of need. The pilot aims to develop stronger links with Locality Teams and ensure the seamless provision of services.

29 Action for Children recommends the CCSW model as best practice. It provides a direct link to a named lead in the local authority with influence on the Local Safeguarding Children Board. The CCSW can serve as a safeguarding lead for all early year’s services (child minders, nurseries and children’s centres), monitoring the quality of provision and ensuring services reach a quality standard in safeguarding linked to the free education entitlement. All our children’s centres have designated safeguarding leads. Over recent years we have been pleased that this is one of the criterion that Ofsted have covered in their inspections.

30 Information sharing is vital to effective safeguarding. What is of greatest importance is what agencies do with information once they have it as in many high profile cases agencies had a great deal of information but it was not effectively used. This was picked up in our annual review of child neglect5 where we saw an increasing number of professionals concerned children but feeling powerless to take action (51% of social workers felt powerless to intervene). Blocks were high thresholds and limited access to early intervention services. We are calling on the Government to increase access to effective early support services. Effective children’s centres should provide a core component of that offer.

How to increase the involvement of families (especially fathers, disadvantaged families, minority ethnic groups and families of children with SEN and disabled children) in the running of children’s centres and in their regular activities

31 Action for Children has prioritised the increased involvement of families into the running of our centres. This approach has produced outstanding results. For example, ninety% of fathers who used our children’s centres report they feel more confident that they could be a good father because of the services they have used.

32 As part of a consortium led by I CAN, Action for Children has received funding from the DfE to deliver the Early Learning Development Programme (ELDP) to over the next three years in all of our children centres.6 This approach will result in children with special educational needs being identified as early as possible as well as parents and carers receiving support, advice and guidance around personalisation.

33 Volunteers are involved across the full range of tasks and activities in our children’s centres: supporting the running of the centre; helping groups, activity days and promotional events; and, home visits and outreach. A total average of 22 hours per children’s centre is contributed by volunteers, which equates to a value per children’s centre of £7,392.

34 For parents and children, volunteers bring extra capacity, provide a reassuring presence and acting as role models. Volunteers support staff to work with more parents and strengthen links with the local community. A volunteer-free centre was described as a quieter, less vibrant place. Volunteering itself helps increase confidence, offers a route to employment and education.

How the overall level and quality of provision is being affected by moves to local funding

35 We are concerned that uncertainty over the EIG will undermine the excellent work undertaken in our children’s centres. Progress in extending reach, improving child outcomes and parenting capacity could be lost.

36 This year we undertook in-depth interviews with 62 of our children’s centre managers who support nearly 40,000 children and over 20,000 families. Responses show the introduction of the EIG and the commitment to a vision for children’s centres has, to a large extent, protected these services from stringent cuts; a notable achievement given the current economic context and the fact that non ring-fenced EIG already being stretched.

37 While this is agreement in principal on early intervention, vital services remain fragile and delivery patchy. The uncertainty about the future of the EIG is potentially disastrous for local services that are unable to plan confidently for the future. This impact will be made all the more severe as local authorities prioritise statutory commitments to child protection services but do not feel equally bound by commitments to early intervention services (Section 17).

38 Financially, underinvestment in prevention represents a false economy creating longer-term burdens on the taxpayer. Losing early intervention services, which prevent children going into care, would cost society more than 1.3 billion each year7. Action for Children is calling for a re-enforced duty to ensure the continued delivery of early intervention services, together with a clearly identifiable funding stream that stretches beyond the current spending review period.

December 2012