Education CommitteeFurther written evidence submitted by the Local Government Association (LGA)

Purpose of the Briefing

This paper sets out the additional information requested by the Education Select Committee’s following the Local Government’s appearance at the oral evidence session on Foundation Years—Sure Start Children’s Centres—4 September 2013.

Since we submitted written evidence to the Education Select committee in 2012, the LGA’s Rewiring Public Services1 campaign, launched in July 2013, sets out propositions to give councils the flexibility they need to redesign services around individual and family needs, and promote effective early intervention. The rewiring campaign includes key propositions for children’s services, based on the following policy principles:

Services should take a whole child and family approach, recognising that individual problems cannot be addressed effectively without considering the wider context of people’s lives.

Services should build greater capacity and resilience in families and neighbourhoods to help themselves and each other.

Place-based public service budgets should be used to deliver financially sustainable local services, tackling waste and inefficiency and with a focus on prevention.

Additional Questions on Sure Start for the LGA

1. How could the value of the existing network of settings be utilised more fully, as an alternative to closures (eg encouraging co-location of services, allowing centres to be used in the evenings and weekends as community facilities)?

The LGA believes there is no “best” or “one size fits all” model for children’s centres across the country and it is vital that we ensure local flexibility to respond to local need.

The LGA’s recent case study publication “Bright futures: local children, local approaches” includes a number of examples of innovative use of children’s centres and way that services are provided.

For example, Northumberland has a resource-sharing initiative with the fire and rescue service, based in a disused ambulance station, and also has an outreach play services to isolated housing estates and small villages.

In Hampshire, local communities are encouraged to use the children’s centre buildings so smaller organisations are now running volunteering programme, crèches and supporting play sessions.

Children’s centres are increasingly being managed in clusters—such as the hub and satellite system in Birmingham across 16 localities in four areas.

In Lambeth, five children’s centres are linked to a consortium of nursery schools which uses a common information management system.

2. We have heard calls for a national outcomes framework for children’s centres. From a local authority point of view, what should be included in such a framework?

The Core Purpose of Children’s Centres, which was co-produced in 2012 by the Department for Education, local authorities and early years professionals, articulated a vision for Children’s Centres to improve outcomes for young children and their families.

This built on years of research into the factors that drive outcomes for children, and how to redress the inequalities that exist. Children’s Centres have to function in the context of neighbourhoods and communities and it is appropriate that they vary their response according to their local circumstances.

The LGA is aware of the work by The Institute of Health Equity which was commissioned by 4Children to identify the most important outcomes that children’s centres should be striving for in order to give all children positive early-years experiences.

As well as specific outcomes for children’s development, it included support for good parenting and the environment in which parents live and work. We understand that the next stage of this work will be to look at how easy these outcomes will be for children’s centres to follow and measure.

3. What steps are local authorities taking to improve the quality and provision of data given to children’s centre leaders and advisory boards? Should there be standard guidance as to format and content of such data?

Our case study publication includes the example of Bristol City Council where children’s centres receive sophisticated data on poverty, worklessness, health and wellbeing to inform the priorities for their community, as well as all live birth and GP move data to support effective outreach work and the delivery of universal and targeted services.

It has put protocols in place for every children’s centre to have a linked health visitor and speech, language and communication therapist and to share information (with parents’ permission) on any families of children considered vulnerable at the 14 day check. In Wakefield, ambitious plans to improve integrated working include information sharing and installation of a common IT system.

Local authorities have data sharing protocols with health partners and there is a lot of work underway to improve data sharing between public bodies. For example, the LGA is supporting the Improving Information Sharing and Management (IISaM) project which is a joint initiative between Bradford Metropolitan District Council, Leicestershire County Council and the 10 local authorities in Greater Manchester, and is supported by central government, the Information Commissioner’s Office and others to improve information sharing and management.

The project has an active group on LGA’s Knowledge Hub. Toolkits have been developed and adapted by the project to help any organisation to share information appropriately with partners and colleagues; this includes a data flow diagram for sharing post-natal data with children’s centres.

4. How are local authorities encouraging more parents and representative groups to become involved in the running of children’s centres?

Many local authorities are running a mix of local authority run and third sector run centres, with few local authorities running wholly one set or another. Commissioning centres out to the third sector allows the added value of access to funding streams only available to the voluntary sector and often brings in different approaches to volunteering, professional supervision of staff and systems to record and monitor outcomes.

Parental involvement has been a future of children’s centres from the outset. Evidence from the 2012 Children’s Centres Census shows that the number of children’s centres using volunteers increased substantially between April 2011 and April 2012 with more than 60% of centres saying the number of volunteers they are using had increased.

The recent All-Party Parliamentary Report “Best Practice for a Sure Start: The Way Forward for Children’s Centres” notes that volunteers are highly effective in improving the reach of centres to a wider group of people and helping to shape services so that they are responsive to community needs.

5. How should Sure Start children’s centres link with the offer of free early education for disadvantaged two year olds? Is there a general policy from local authorities not to support places in the maintained nursery school sector, as the Committee was told before the summer?

Earlier this year the LGA produced a joint briefing with the Department for Education on the two year old offer for council leaders, lead councillors, chief executives and directors of communications to inform them of the new statutory duty and funding.

This included advice to our member councils about suitable providers which said that nurseries, playgroups, childminders, Sure Start children’s centres, nursery schools and nursery classes are all able to provide places.

It is not the case that there is a general policy from local authorities not to support places in the maintained nursery school sector.

6. Are local authorities sufficiently knowledgeable about individual evidence-based programmes? Should they step back from stipulating specific programmes and allow children’s centres to decide for themselves which programmes are most appropriate for their families and children?

We are not aware of any evidence that would support children’s centres deciding for themselves which programmes are most appropriate, or are more knowledgeable about individual evidence-based programmes than local authorities.

The first output from the Evaluation of Children’s Centres in England (ECCE), published in 2011 notes that the local authority was the lead organisation for the majority of children’s centres—eighty-one% of centres were led by the local authority, schools or both. Forty-seven% of centres offered at least one evidence-based programme from those shortlisted in the Graham Allen review on early intervention.

October 2013