Education CommitteeFurther written evidence submitted by Barnardos’
Barnardo’s has already provided written evidence to the committee. To reiterate, our key points are that:
Children’s Centres are the central means by which Government can reach out holistically to families post-birth and pre-school. Without them it is unclear how Government can achieve its goals around early intervention effectively.
Children’s Centres are an enhanced cost-effective means of co-locating services, not an additional layer of bureaucracy. Most Children’s Centres help to house services from other sectors (eg health, social services) making it easier for parents to access services in one place. Furthermore savings made by LAs in closing Children’s Centres would be passed quickly on to other sectors which would need to relocate these services elsewhere.
Where Children’s Centres are said to be underused we believe they should be more fully utilised, not closed down. In many areas a great deal of money has been invested in developing these centres and we would advocate more being done to co-locate services such as birth registration; childcare; health services; social services; or employment services on these sites. More might be done to allow the centres to be used in evenings or weekends as community facilities for hire.
Further to this evidence, Barnardo’s was delighted to be invited to provide oral evidence to the committee on 26 June 2013. In the light of topics that were raised during this session and I am attaching some more technical appendix material that may be informative and useful for the committee’s deliberations. These materials relate to:
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Barnardos’ remains fully committed to delivering services through its network of Children’s Centres as we believe they represent the most effective way to intervene early in the lives of the most vulnerable children and families. With our experience as a large national provider of children’s centres, Barnardo’s believes that these three issues underpin the key challenges for improving the quality and reach of Children’s Centres in the future. Please do not hesitate to contact me (vicki.lant@barnardos.org.uk) or my colleague Jonathan Rallings (jonathan.rallings@barnardos.org.uk) if you would like any further information about this information.
Yours sincerely
Vicki Lant
Head Children’s Centre Development
Annex 1
NATIONAL NETWORK OF SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITY VENUES TO DELIVER INTEGRATED CHILDHOOD SERVICES
Barnardo’s values and commends the national network of centres created in most communities as a means through which current and future development of appropriate childhood and family-related services and interventions may be offered.
Investment was made throughout England in order to create an early years infrastructure for the future that may have increasing and longer term impact to build stronger communities. National data gathering currently measures what can be measured; however, there are daily exemplars across the country that go unrecorded in formal reporting, where interventions by children’s centre staff reduce potential for harm and risk to children within families, stabilising relationships between parents and their children. At present in the absence of a national framework setting out clear outcomes and using accessible data sources, or appropriate modelling related to the cost-benefit of interventions (ie potential saving had a risk not been mitigated), undermines the apparent efficacy of centre work. Longitudinal studies are evidencing some gains and we have international exemplars that demonstrate impact arising from similar investment (Harlem Children’s Zone; Te Whariki—New Zealand). Loss of provision at this early stage in its development may undermine this opportunity to create an important contribution to national community infrastructure.
The current model acknowledged proportionality in service offer—most provision in areas of high need and light touch, where demography suggests families may manage their parenting with greater confidence. We recognise there is potential to re-appraise location and community value of these more limited bases, but a known, universal gateway to service matters for everyone. Highly capable working mothers and fathers, who have no natural support networks in the community can founder at points in their parenting and welcome informed, supportive advice and guidance.
Children’s centres can be most effective when they offer childcare, but provision needs to complement and not destabilise the market in a community; partnerships may enable any available bespoke accommodation within centres to be used to capacity. Centres should be known and valued hubs of professional practice, valued by early years, health, local authority, charitable, employment/learning and school providers alike.
Improved welcome and appropriateness of offer to both parents, beginning with birth registration (as in Barnardo’s Benchill Centre, Manchester), progressing through evidenced based parenting programmes, well-modelled parent and child activities and greater community-based learning/qualification opportunities (Employment, Training and Skills) may help to maximise available resources. Barnardo’s is developing a model to increase the community benefit/regeneration aspect of the service, which may help to increase income to stabilise the service.
Barnardo’s has researched and published promising practice related to its work with fathers in centres, Are we nearly there yet, dad? That bears wider replication.
Annex 2
LEADERSHIP AND GOVERNANCE
In order that centres may enjoy the status they deserve in leading models of integrated practice and partnership working, centre leaders need to believe they have a right to contribute to locality planning and leadership of local systems for community well-being and be skilled to be effective.
An updated iteration of the National Professional Qualification of Integrated Centre Leadership (NPQICL—Level 7), delivered in the current blended model, would qualify leaders to operate in senior leadership groups with greater confidence and clarity. The proposed remodelling to a purely on-line qualification would have far less transformational impact and may be far less successful in securing levels of completion of 95+%.
The National College is well placed to promote system leadership across the range of providers supporting children and young people through their learning and development, encouraging the kind of federations that plan to meet the learning needs of children and their families within a community (Barnardo’s Greenwich example quoted during the session).
The National College could similarly promote and enable networks of national, regional and local leaders of integrated centre provision to reflect the parallel school leadership model endorsed by the College. Peer leadership can support centres that may be performing less well in certain aspects of their provision than they should.
As government promotes the concept of commissioned children’s centre provision, the freedoms of locality working could be far better served if centres had robust systems of governance that enabled them and their lead agencies to manage their affairs in the ways of prospective partners. The National Council for Voluntary Organisations has produced a code for Good Governance, which offers appropriate, robust modelling for effective governance within the sector; this would be more appropriate than a model of school governance.
Federations of providers in a locality may also be able to consider Barnardo’s challenge to the inequality of premium payments available for two year olds and children five and above. In our paper, Mind the Gap, we identify potential ways to redistribute the premium funding principle to include three to foud year olds, so there may be consistency of support within the learning system for all children having high need. Whilst we would recommend government to address this universally, effective local governance may enable it faster.
Participative governance models may also assist development of models that produce savings, whilst limiting detrimental impact to front-line service (Transforming Early Years: different, better, lower cost services for children and their families; 2011 NESTA/Innovation Unit).
Local Authorities need to ensure that the required data for effective performance of centres is readily available to centres and their governance groups.
Annex 3
COMMISSIONING
Please find below my speaking notes to the All Party Parliamentary Group for children, relating to commissioning and proposed improvements.
Chair: Baroness Massey of Darwen
Vice-Chairmen: Jessica Lee MP, Baroness Walmsley, Baroness Blood, Bill Esterson MP, Baroness Berridge
Secretary: Baroness Howarth of Breckland Treasurer: Earl of Listowel
Clerk: Heather Ransom
All Party Parliamentary Group for Children on: Tuesday 25 June 2013 5.00–6.30pm, Committee Room 17, House of Commons
The Children and Families Bill: Childcare Reforms
Barnardo’s context
Barnardo’s is the second largest non-municipal provider of children’s centres—with 138 centres as of June 2013.
Barnardo’s Children’s Centres provide for a range of needs, from universal services open to all families, through to more targeted supported for teenage parents, parents with English as a second language and families living in poverty. The most common outcomes that Barnardo’s family and parenting services work towards are:
Improved behaviour.
Improved parenting.
Positive/improved family relationships.
Improved knowledge of parenting/caring.
Enhanced parent/carer adult relations.
Children and Families Bill/More Great Childcare/Childcare Commission observations
Barnardos welcomes
moves towards greater integration of service provision around the most vulnerable children; and
with specific reference to children’s centres, the proposed New Clause 22—sharing of live birth data and birth registration arrangements (Benchill CC Manchester exemplar).
However in a challenging context of competition for limited resources we suggest an holistic view of important strands of proposed reforms in order to ensure greatest effectiveness. All party parliamentary groups have indicated the:
long term value in supporting quality development in the pre-birth to five years (development of brain architecture; foundations for continuous achievement);
benefits of high quality childcare, especially in areas of highest community need;
transformational value of SSCCs acting as a service hub (multi-agency—more than the sum of the parts);
importance of high quality leadership—from government throughout the system that supports the child in her community; and
potential for a robust commissioning environment to develop the children’s centre market.
Working at all strands has potential to build the national early years service that Professor Peter Moss recommended to the Select Committee (05/06/2013).
I see children’s centres as, in the long term, the core provision for all children and families, and as part of the movement towards a universal, integrated and functional early childhood system. It is the difference between what happens over the next two or three years and where we want to be in 15 or 20 years.
Q222 (p4)
From Barnardo’s perspective focus on:
commissioning; and
leadership.
Barnardo’s values the opportunities SSCCs offer to:
offer value-based, multi-layered services (universal to highly targeted) when families need, in ways, places and times that are convenient; and
build capacity to problem solve and build more resilient communities.
Barnardo’s seeks to engage in the commercial tendering process in ethical ways but there are challenges that are preventing commissioners and commissioned from creating mature, market-building relationships.
From experience in children’s centre and family support related contract provision and review, as well as sector research Commissioning for better outcomes [CBO] (Barnardo’s 2012), Barnardo’s suggests:
The voluntary, community and social enterprise sector (VCSES) needs certainty of policy and funding landscape in order to invest in centres. Government leadership required to create policy steer (valuing pre-birth to five provision) and a funding environment that encourages LAs to engage in longer term partnerships [CBO evidence, 50% contracts for a year or less].
Government leadership is required to tackle system-wide barriers such as Transfer of Undertakings [Protection of Employment] (TUPE).
Costs incurred in the contract should be proportionate to the benefits of the contract [ie amount of detail; length of procurement process; contract duration]
Certainty of Policy/Funding Landscape
Government needs to give clear signal of growing pipeline of opportunities to merit investment and business growth strategies (evidence of scale, term & value).
Encouragement to LAs to move to strategic commissioning—long term transformational practice rather than short term transactional arrangements—creative, user-led options to improve and reduce costs (radical efficiency).
Government leadership in earlier notification of funding to LAs to redress risk averse, short term behaviours.
Government leadership of positive business-like behaviours—collaboratives that deliver efficient service with appropriate margins in reward.
Tackling System-wide Barriers
Inappropriate costly demands for pension fund payment assurance bonds, when legally binding parent-company guarantee would suffice.
Commissioning/procurement processes that are proportionate to the contract.
Encouragement of innovation.
Challenging discriminatory beliefs that the VCSES is transient and may not deliver over time, or does not have the business acumen nor performance management skills to deliver as well as the private/local government organisations.
July 2013