Afternoon:
9°c
Sure Start childcare scheme is ‘failing to help poorest families’
Tim Ross, Education Correspondent13 Jan 2010
Gordon Brown's £7 billion flagship childcare scheme is failing to deliver Labour's vision, a watchdog has warned.
More than 3,000 Sure Start centres have opened across England since Labour won power in 1997, including 500 in London.
The aim was to provide quality childcare and health services to all families with children under five — particularly deprived families.
But in a new analysis seen by the Evening Standard, the National Audit Office suggested Sure Start was still failing to reach the most disadvantaged working-class families who were intended to benefit.
The spending watchdog suggested the scheme, which last year cost £885 million to run, was not “cost effective”.
Today ministers were preparing to give evidence to a House of Commons inquiry into the scheme. The audit office memorandum, prepared for the Commons education committee, criticised the “wide variations” in the cost of providing Sure Start services across England.
“Together with other evidence, this suggests there is still scope for improving cost effectiveness,” the study said.
Sure Start was criticised in 2006 for failing to reach the poorest families. Critics said the scheme was dominated by the middle classes.
In response, ministers announced they would spend an extra £79 million a year on hiring “outreach workers” to recruit the most disadvantaged single parents and working-class families.
Ministers told councils they should focus on making sure the most vulnerable children were able to benefit.
But the audit office report found there was “a low level” of outreach activity. Even in the poorest parts of the country, children's centre staff spent only 38 hours a week on outreach work, it said.
Liberal Democrat children's spokesman David Laws said: “Sure Start centres can transform children's lives, but Labour has failed to ensure the money is being properly spent.
"It is essential centres improve their outreach work to make sure that those children who will really benefit aren't missing out.”
Conservative spokeswoman Maria Miller said her party wanted the programme to “work harder for the families it was aimed at”.
She added: “We will substantially increase the number of Sure Start health visitors, which will be a more effective way to reach out to the most vulnerable families.”
Children's Minister Dawn Primarolo said: “Sure Start has been instrumental in helping families give children the best start in life.
"Our campaign is raising awareness so families know about their local centre and outreach workers play an important role in ensuring centres reach the most vulnerable families.”
Reader views (1)
I work for 4 Sure Start Children's Centres in the most deprived communities in the UK. I can't speak for any others but I can speak with authority when I say that none of the Centres I work for saw a single penny of the £79million we were supposed to have for outreach. That money disappeared into the Local Authorities and never reappeared. They did not pass it onto us. I personally find it offensive that we're being called failures just because Councils have pocketed the cash for their own uses, leaving us to fund our services on annually reducing budgets.
Councils are also to blame for the lack of decent data, not Sure Starts. When all Sure Starts came under Local Authority control, many LAs stated what staff they thought each Centre should have. All of the LAs I have experience with did not think that monitoring of activities was important so they did not provide funding towards it. Some Sure Start, mostly the older ones with more experience, disagreed and arranged their budget plans to pay for a Monitoring Officer regardless. Sadly many did not. Those of us that ignored our LAs have ample data with which to prove the effectiveness of what we do. The LAs are only now realising they need Monitoring Officers, 4 years later.
Don't blame Sure Starts for the incompetance and outright fraud of our political masters in the local Councils.
- Joshua Calvert, London, UK, 18/01/2010 15:41
Report abuse
