Education CommitteeFurther written evidence submitted by Action for Children

Action for Children has submitted written evidence to the Committee but I thought it would be helpful to re-iterate one or two of the key messages from my oral evidence session.

Children’s Centres are a crucial part of the early years offer, providing effective, accessible, local responses that reach out to vulnerable families and improve children’s life chances. They offer an essential combination of support for a child’s early development through the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) key areas, working directly with children, supporting parents and early education providers.

Quality

It is essential that services provided to vulnerable children and families are of a consistently high quality as we know that this is what drives improved outcomes for children. This requires both good quality practitioners and leadership. Qualifications, training, resources and support networks are all crucial elements to ensure quality provision.

I do recommend that Qualified Teachers are required in children’s centres. We have found that Qualified Teachers based in our Children’s Centres not only support engagement between professionals and parents, but also have a positive impact on staff feeling confident and able to deliver high quality services.

Evidence has highlighted the importance of the role of social workers working with, and advising, early years professionals within children’s centres and other family support settings to implement a “step up and step down” approach where families can be provided with more formal and/or intensive types of help if required but can also access informal, non-statutory help if their support needs reduce without going back to the beginning of a referral process. Approaches like this need time to embed in local areas and prove that they work.

In my Early Years Foundation Stage Review (EYFS) report published in 2010, I recommended the introduction of an integrated review at two and a half years old to bring together health and early years systems. I welcome the Government’s moves to develop the integrated review and hope that it is appropriate and easy to use. I would be particularly pleased if the importance of a quick conclusion to the fairly protracted discussions between the Departments of Health and Education on this issue could be highlighted by the Select Committee.

Reaching the Most Vulnerable

We have demonstrated how children’s centres can successfully reach the most vulnerable through providing open access to children and families in a non-stigmatising way. To achieve this investment in effective outreach delivered by skilled practitioners is an essential part of engaging the most vulnerable and can provide a pathway to targeted services, such as evidence-based programmes. Through co-location, children’s centres offer a wide range of services to meet local need. 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.

Commissioning for Stability

The commissioning of Children’s Centres must provide more emphasis on stability for children and families and hence support the delivery of evidence-based early intervention services. We recommend that the Government commits to developing an approach to funding that is underpinned by long-term planning and consistent support. At present the approach is geared primarily around 3 year contracts and price. We believe that this is a two dimensional approach which ignores the importance of providing stability and continuity to the families and communities who need it the most.

Integrating Children’s Centres and Child Care

Targeted family support and effective early education must work together to give children the best start in life. High quality early education can help to narrow the attainment gap but we need to remember that parental engagement and support remains the single biggest factor in determining children’s educational attainment. Government needs to link these initiatives so that they support, rather than undermine each other. For example, we are concerned that the way the two-year-old offer is being rolled out is threatening the holistic approach to early years by separating childcare from family support services. Given that the two-year-old offer has been designed as a separate arrangement, vulnerable children and families are increasingly not coming into contact with other early years services.

Early education and child care need to be integrated into the wider system to ensure effective data sharing and delivery of services so that any problems are picked up early and acted upon. For example, within children’s centres, the link with health is key to providing a joined-up approach to the assessment and effective response to vulnerable children’s needs.

In my EYFS review, I highlighted the importance of the need to understand the subtlety of the difference between school readiness and “un-readiness”. Children’s Centres play a vital role in supporting the child to develop (through the EYFS key areas), providing the education setting and working with the parents.

The best Children’s Centres also develop good relationships with partners, such as child care providers and nurseries, to ensure safeguarding remains a priority and professionals are supported to meet statutory requirements. Good local practice needs to link to new national initiatives, such as the Government’s proposed creation of childminder agencies, to ensure a cohesive approach.

February 2013