Education CommitteeWritten evidence submitted by the Department for Education

Introduction

1. Sure Start Children’s Centres support families with young children. The Coalition Government wants to improve outcomes for young children and their families, particularly the most vulnerable families. A system of integrated, joined up services is key to achieving this.

2. Local centres can act as a universal “front door” offering services to all. However, evaluations show that local authorities can do more to demonstrate a tangible improvement in child development outcomes for the most disadvantaged children. The Government’s reform programme is therefore focused on:

better linking across initiatives and between government departments to support disadvantaged families and children;

encouraging greater use of evidence-based interventions, so families and taxpayers can have confidence that the services delivered via children’s centres are those which will have the greatest impact and reach the neediest children and families; and

better accountability and transparency, so it is clear whether outcomes have been improved.

3. The Government has moved away from a centrally prescribed Sure Start model and introduced greater freedoms for local authorities to organise services locally. Sufficiency is as much about making appropriate and integrated services available, as it is about providing premises1. Local authorities should ensure that services are accessible to all families with young children in their area and they must ensure there is consultation2 before making significant changes to the range and nature of services provided.

Evidence based intervention

4. Since it came to office in 2010 the Government has:

(a)committed to recruiting an additional 4,200 health visitors by 2015 and developing health visiting services to drive up health outcomes and reduce inequalities;

(b)improved integration with health services through better links between children’s centres and health visitors, and the piloting of an integrated review for children at age two to two and-a-half;

(c)encouraged all children’s centres to have access to a named social worker to manage risk and take appropriate child protection action where necessary; and

(d)explored and developed the evidence base for effective outreach and family support delivered from children’s centres.

Leadership of a qualified workforce

5. Evidence shows that the quality of leadership in a setting is a key factor in the overall quality of experience for children in that provision. The Government will shortly be responding to Professor Nutbrown’s Review of Early Years qualifications. This response will set out plans to improve capacity and quality, including the quality of leadership, in the Early Years workforce.

Reformed accountability framework

6. In order to improve accountability and transparency, the Government has:

(a)ensured there is enough funding to enable local authorities to have sufficient children’s centres to meet local need and to contribute to their core purpose of:

reducing inequalities in child development and school readiness;

improving parenting aspirations, self esteem and parenting skills; and

improving child and family health and life chances;

(b)reformed the funding and accountability framework to give greater freedom to local authorities whilst improving the focus on the outcomes it wants to achieve;

(c)introduced the trial of payment by results in twenty-seven local authorities with the intention of ensuring that children’s centres and local authorities are rewarded for real improvements in measurable outcomes for children;

(d)consulted on slimmed down and revised Sure Start statutory guidance which removes many of the expectations set by the previous Government and focuses much more clearly on local authority duties and how those duties help to achieve the core purpose of improving outcomes;

(e)improved the transparency of services to vulnerable children to improve accountability;

(f)worked with Ofsted who are revising the current inspection framework to reflect the reality of how local authorities are organising their children’s centres to focus on the most vulnerable.

7. In that context, the Government welcomes the Committee’s interest in this area. The Committee identified nine areas where evidence was particularly welcome. These are dealt with in turn below.

1. The new Core Purpose of Sure Start Children’s Centres, how this has evolved and is different from the original design and purpose of Sure Start

8. When the network of children’s centres was first established, the original concept of a “full core offer” which was a list of services a children’s centre should provide, played an important role in helping to shape and define a children’s centre. However, the Coalition Government was concerned to make services for disadvantaged children more outcome focused and has replaced the list of core services with a clear statement of outcomes related to the core purpose of children’s centres.

9. The core purpose of Sure Start Children’s Centres was developed to replace the Sure Start Children’s Centre “Core Offer”. The core purpose is intended to provide a greater scope for local authorities and children’s centres to better respond to local need, helping to take Sure Start back to its original purpose of early intervention. It contributes to local authorities fulfilling their wider duty to improve the well-being of young children in their area and to reduce inequalities (section 1 of the Childcare Act 2006).

10. Consultation in 2011 showed there was strong support for the clearer focus on outcomes. 81% of respondents agreed that a move towards a more outcomes-focused approach would allow local areas to respond more flexibility to local needs. 91% agreed that children’s centres should help to improve outcomes for young children and their families, with a particular focus on the most disadvantaged, so that children are equipped for life and ready for school, no matter what their background or family circumstances.

2. The effectiveness and impact of Sure Start Children’s Centres to date, including the role of Ofsted inspections

11. The National Evaluation of Sure Start (NESS)3, the study of early Sure Start local programmes, found that Sure Start has had some significant positive effects on family life in programme areas. It also showed it reached some of the most deprived mothers and improved their life satisfaction, though any positive impacts on the educational or social development, or health, of children in those areas were no longer noticeable at age seven.

12. The final NESS report4, published in June 2012, emphasised that since the early days of the programme Sure Start has evolved considerably in response to research findings and both internal and external feedback. It identified a series of positive impacts. Mothers in Sure Start Local Programme (SSLP) areas, for example, said they:

engaged in less harsh discipline;

provided a more stimulating learning environment for their children; and

provided a less chaotic home environment for boys.

The final report, however, concluded that, at age seven, there were no identifiable or consistent differences in terms of child educational, social—behavioural or child health outcomes, between children in SSLP areas and those not served by a programme.

13. The effectiveness of children’s centres is now being measured through the Evaluation of Children’s Centres in England (ECCE) project5 commissioned in June 2011. The first report from the evaluation, based on a survey of centre leaders, was published in July 2012. It noted that services with the highest number of users were early learning and childcare, and “stay and play” programmes. It recorded 46 different types of services and programmes as offered by centres, with a high proportion of the latter now using outcomes data to monitor their own impact.

14. The main ECCE report examining impact of different models of children centres on the outcomes of children and families in deprived areas is due June 2015. The evaluation will finish in December 2017 with a report examining the cohort’s Early Years Foundation Stage results to assess any longer term educational benefits of children’s centre attendance.

15. Since inspections began in 2010, Ofsted reports have been an increasingly useful source of information about the effectiveness of individual children’s centres, though they do not provide a rigorous assessment of overall impact. At June 2012, of over 1,380 centres inspected, Ofsted have judged 69% as good or outstanding for overall effectiveness, with almost all, 98%, rated at least as satisfactory. More particularly, 87% of centres inspected were judged as good or outstanding in the quality of the care, guidance and support they offered to families.

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

16. Sure Start Local Programmes (SSLPs) were consciously experimental and were encouraged to develop their own approaches with their local communities. Drawing on knowledge generated by the SSLPs, the Government moved in 2003 towards a national programme of Sure Start Children’s Centres making a core offer of services for children under five and their families. Further evaluation evidence in 2005 suggested that the early programmes had failed to reach the most vulnerable families effectively, and had even had a negative impact on children from more at risk groups—children of teenage mothers, lone parents and those in workless households., The evaluation also prompted the introduction of practice and statutory guidance to introduce a more evidence-based approach to service delivery that emphasised the importance of effective outreach and the reduction of stigma in using children’s centres.

17. Legislation requires that children’s centres provide access to early childhood services as defined in section 2 of the Childcare Act 2006. Children’s centres act as hubs of early childhood services which, when integrated together are more effective than when delivered separately. The legal definition of early childhood services includes early education and childcare, but goes well beyond this to include: social services functions; health services; training and employment services for parents; and, information and advice for families.

18. The “core purpose” of children’s centres, introduced by the Coalition Government, has marked the shift from the “top down” prescriptive list of services that were provided in the early Sure Start programmes, to a focus on better outcomes for young children delivered by services responsive to the needs and demands of the local community. The most common services provided by children’s centres include “Stay and Play”, home-based family services parenting classes and breast feeding support.

4. How children centres compare with similar initiatives in other countries

19. Direct comparisons of children’s centres with initiatives in other countries must be made with caution due to variations in the range of services offered and the breadth of population targeted. However, there are some interesting models in other countries that reflect our aims set out for children’s centres through the outcomes framework of the core purpose.

20. The 2011 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OCED) report “Starting Strong III: Early Childhood Education and Care” outlines a variety of initiatives in other countries including Germany, Ireland, the Republic of Korea and the Netherlands that offer similar hub models of early childhood services. For example, in Germany, family offices are established throughout the country. Different social services are bundled in this office, and families can ask for information or consult the family offices for anything related to family life and child development. In the Netherlands, educational and welfare services are more regularly being integrated into broad-based schools. There are many different types of broad-based schools, but all are based on the idea of service integration. Educational facilities, recreational facilities, child care services, child health services, etc., are integrated in an area-based network or even in one multifunctional building.

21. The Australian Government is establishing 38 Early Learning and Care Centres across the country, following provision in its 2008–09 Budget. These will provide high quality and affordable integrated early learning and care in a long day setting that takes into account the specific requirements of the local community. The centres are being located, wherever possible, on school and university grounds, or other community land.

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

22. The Payment by results (PbR) trials are exploring the potential to incentivise local authorities to focus on delivering the Core Purpose of children’s centres. Twenty seven local authorities are taking part in the trials. Trial areas are testing both a national PbR scheme between the Department for Education and local authorities, and local PbR schemes between local authorities and individual children’s centres. It is too early to take a view on the effectiveness of national or local PbR schemes or PbR measures. Performance data and reward payments will be processed in May 2013.

23. For parenting programmes the Commissioning Toolkit has helped define a good evidence-base. All of the programmes listed have been independently assessed to show that they work and are purposely designed as parenting programmes. This means that their content and activities specifically aim to improve the parent/child relationship and/or help parents manage their children’s behaviour. Since the toolkit was re-launched in April 2012 it has received an average of over 1,000 unique page views per month of the main search page alone.

24. Outreach and family support plays an important role in reaching the most vulnerable and disadvantaged families in greatest need and is most effective locally when outreach workers work in an integrated way6, with health visitors, social workers and other early years professionals. Important new investment through Department of Health budgets to provide 4,200 extra health visitors7, working alongside outreach and family support workers, will enable stronger links with local health services.

25. We are working with the Department of Health to introduce a single integrated review in 2015 for all children aged between two to 2½. This will combine the strongest elements of the current Healthy Child Programme review at two to 2½ and the Early Years progress check at age two—to identify the child’s progress, strengths and needs at this important age in order to promote positive outcomes in health, well-being, learning and behaviour.

26. Children are also assessed at the end8 of the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) for school readiness using the Early Years Foundation Stage Profile (EYFSP). We have introduced a new check of children’s phonic decoding knowledge at the end of Year 1. The results from this assessment can be used in conjunction with the information from the EYFSP to give an even fuller picture of “school readiness”.

6. How to increase the use of evidence-based early intervention in children centres

27. In a time of constrained resources and more local decision-making, it is important that services continue to develop a strong focus on evidence-based interventions and services.

28. The Sure Start Children’s Centre Core Purpose9 includes a renewed focus on the importance of evidence-based interventions in improving outcomes for families in greatest need. In addition to this, the department’s Business Plan10 commits to work with local authorities to increase the use of evidence-based interventions in children’s centres. The greater focus on increasing evidence-based early intervention is also supported by the on-going trial of payments by results (PbR) arrangements.

29. We have also commissioned a longitudinal study of children’s centres in England (ECCE) which will run to 2017. The first ECCE report, published in July 201211, showed that the majority of centres offer some forms of evidence-based early intervention programmes and services. The most common evidence-based programmes implemented by children’s centre leaders were “Incredible Years”12, “Triple P”13 and “Family Nurse Partnership”14. Only 12% of those surveyed did not currently offer any evidence-based programmes.

30. A number of organisations provide information on “what works” in terms of improving outcomes for children, such as C4EO15. In addition, we have published a range of materials to support those who commission evidence-based services, including:

a literature review to examine the use of evidence in the commissioning of local authority children’s services 16.

the Commissioning Toolkit which lists parenting interventions developed by the National Academy of Parenting Research (NAPR).

31. An Early Intervention Foundation is currently being procured by the Department for Education.

7. 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 access to a “named social worker”

32. A shared understanding of responsibilities for providing early help is essential so that professionals across agencies take responsibility for identifying issues, providing support or referring to specialist services, where necessary. Inter-agency statutory guidance Working Together to Safeguard Children (2010) sets out the roles and responsibilities for agencies when safeguarding children and promoting their welfare. The guidance is being revised following a 12 week consultation exercise.

33. Local Authorities are well placed to bring together services around individual families. Research evidence indicates that parents value services that are co-ordinated, so that information is shared and does not have to be repeated several times17.

34. An integrated approach is very important for the most vulnerable families which suffer multiple risk factors and are the groups who are extremely likely to suffer poor outcomes18. Through Children’s Centres and other outlets:

(a)midwives19 and health visitors promote positive parenting and good parent/child relationships from the outset, and link families to wider resources available. This approach can lead to a direct reduction in young children’s risk of poor outcomes20;

(b)family nurses encourage vulnerable clients to continue to use services, particularly in preparation for the end of their programme when children reach two;

(c)family support workers and outreach teams can identify and support the most vulnerable families very early in a child’s life;

(d)professionals in adults’ services including social care, the NHS, housing and jobcentre plus can “think family”21 and consider what support parents might need with fulfilling their parenting role when they are addressing such issues as parental mental illness, substance misuse, past maltreatment or domestic violence.

35. Many examples of integration between health visitors and children’s centres already exist (Annex A). In order to improve practice we have explored, with providers, how children’s centres can maximise the opportunities for closer working with the extra 4,200 health visitors in post by April 201522. Key feedback includes clearly defined roles for leadership, shared targets and common incentive structures across health and education, co-location of teams, joint commissioning and training placements and improved information sharing.

36. Recent consultations on the core purpose of children’s centres23 and the Statutory Guidance for Sure Start children’s centres revealed that many local authorities still struggle to get basic information from the health service about live births, so that Children’s Centres can let new parents know about the services they offer.

37. Effective and appropriate information sharing underpins robust integrated working24. The Department for Education and the Department of Health, are committed25 to working with partners to promote good practice and overcome lingering barriers to effective sharing of data and information amongst the early year’s workforce.

38. Professor Eileen Munro’s review of child protection highlighted the importance of “early help” and in particular the role that children’s centres can play. In “Supporting Families in the Foundation Years”, we set out an expectation that all children’s centres will have access to a “named social worker”. Many social workers already work closely with children’s centres. We want to see these services working effectively together to improve outcomes for children and families, particularly those in greatest need.

39. The new Ofsted Framework for the inspection of local authority arrangements to protect children came into force in June 2012. The unannounced inspections will consider the effectiveness of early identification and help for children, young people, their families and carers. In addition, a multi-inspectorate framework for the inspection of child protection services is expected to be in place during 2013–14. Ofsted, the Care Quality Commission, HMI Probation, HMI Prisons, and HMI Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate are all committed to exploring how they can best use their resources and powers as inspectorates to build an effective joint inspection framework to evaluate the multi-agency arrangements for the help and protection of children.

8. 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

40. Collaborative working with parents is a key principle of children’s centres and we are committed to finding new ways to involve families and communities in children’s centres. We would like to see the best children’s centres acting as genuine community hubs helping to build social capital and cohesion.

41. Many mothers and fathers already directly contribute to the running of their centres through volunteering. In 2011, 4Children carried out a survey26 of 181 children’s centres on behalf of Family Lives, which found that 87% of them were using volunteers.

42. As part of our strategy to engage more men and fathers as volunteers in children’s centres, we are funding the Day Care Trust27 to increase volunteering in children’s centres and childcare settings, including looking at ways of increasing participation of fathers and grandfathers28. Good practice will be disseminated by the Day Care Trust through briefing sheets to be published on their website and promoted at their annual conference.

43. In addition, local authorities have a duty to make sure all children’s centres have an advisory board; and that the membership of advisory boards includes parents and prospective parents from the local authority area. The Department has consulted on revised statutory guidance on Sure Start Children’s Centres, which suggests that if certain groups are unwilling or unable to represent their own views by joining an Advisory Board, the children’s centre should ensure these families have other opportunities to make their views heard, for example, through using outreach support networks or parent forums.

44. In order to highlight further opportunities for parents and communities to get more involved in all aspects of centre delivery, including running children’s centres and children’s centre services, the Department for Education published a discussion paper on increasing parental and community involvement in children’s centres in May 2012. The paper invited expressions of interest from groups of parents or groups of children’s centre staff and parents to set up their own community bodies to bid to run whole children’s centres or children’s centre services. Ten groups began participating in the project in October 2012. The Department has contracted with 4Children to provide advice and support to groups and help them develop their proposals.

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

45. The Government believes it is for local authorities to decide how best to allocate their funding, in consultation with their local communities. Funding for children’s centres has been devolved to local authorities since 2004. In April 2011 the Sure Start funding ring-fence was removed and the Early Intervention Grant (EIG) was introduced. Removing the ring-fence has given local authorities flexibility to use their resources to support vulnerable children and families in ways which make most sense locally to meet local needs. From 2013–14, the Early Intervention Grant will roll in to the Business Rates Retention (BRR) system, the new local government finance system. As the EIG is already a non-ringfenced grant, the transfer to the BRR does not change the flexibility local authorities have to use the funding as they think best, including targeting support for the most disadvantaged families.

46. Nationally, there has been a small net reduction in children’s centre numbers but according to local authorities, only 19 outright closures to September 2012, since April 2010. (Source: Sure Start-On Database—September 201229) Most of the reduction is accounted for by some local authorities reorganising and merging a number of their children’s centres. We believe that the sufficiency of children’s centres is as much about making appropriate and integrated services available, taking account of the core purpose, as it is about providing premises in particular geographical areas.

47. In terms of the quality of provision, Ofsted inspection of children’s centres is relatively new with the first inspections taking place in 2010. The recently published “Ofsted Statistical release—Children’s centre inspections and outcomes” (status: provisional) shows that of 151 children’s centres inspected between 1 April 2012 and 30 June 2012, 70% were judged good or outstanding for overall effectiveness. This is an increase of four percentage points from the proportion judged good or outstanding in the previous quarter and is the highest percentage of children’s centres judged good or outstanding since the 1 January to 31 March 2011 quarter.

December 2012