Press Release - Sure Start Children's Centres
19 December 2006
Sure Start Children’s Centres are valued by most of the families
who use them, according to the National Audit Office. The families
reached by children’s centres are some of the most disadvantaged,
though the early signs are that more still needs to be done to
reach and support some of the most excluded groups. The costs of
centres, and of activities in centres, vary widely, and local
authorities and centres that the NAO visited needed to understand
their costs better and assess whether they were using their funds
cost-effectively.
Those were the main conclusions from today’s report to
Parliament which finds that good progress is being made in creating
children’s centres which bring together a range of services for
pre-school children and families. The full effectiveness of the
centres will be measurable only in the long term but so far a
thousand centres have been built in deprived areas and the
programme is exceeding its target to reach 650,000 children by the
end of March 2006.
The NAO interviewed 191 centre and local authority managers and
visited 30 established centres as well as meeting parents. Centres
were raising the quality of services and making them more relevant
to the needs of lone parents, teenage parents and ethnic minorities
in communities with large minority populations. However less than a
third of centres were proactively identifying and taking services
out to families with high levels of need in their area, including
lone and teenage parents, disabled children’s parents and parents
from some ethnic minorities in areas with small minority
populations. These groups are typically the hardest to reach and
are least likely to visit a children’s centre to use the services
provided there.
Reflecting the relatively recent establishment of children’s
centres, they and local authorities had as yet collected only
limited data to assess cost-effectiveness. Over half (56 per cent)
of the local authorities consulted were not monitoring the
performance of centres and a similar number (52 per cent) were
doing no work to identify the cost or cost-effectiveness of
services. Local authorities and the centres themselves need to
direct resources where they would be most effective. The NAO found
that there was no close relationship between spending by centres
and the number of children and families using key services.
To provide an integrated service, organisations that have
previously operated independently must share information and
resources. This is a significant challenge and will require local
authorities and a range of agencies, particularly Primary Care
Trusts and Jobcentre Plus, to work more closely together to deliver
children's centre services.
The report makes recommendations to improve the delivery of
services within the centres. These include projects to reach
identified disadvantaged groups; training staff in financial
expertise and new ways of working; centres and local authorities
establishing the cost of activities; enhancing relationships with
partner agencies; and better local monitoring to secure value for
money.
The NAO report also contains details of a model used by one
local authority to allocate resources, and gives examples of good
practice in reaching families with the highest needs, forming
effective partnerships and monitoring performance.
Sir John Bourn, head of the NAO, said
today:
“Though it is too early to tell the long-term impact of
Sure Start children’s centres on children's lives, we do know that
families value the services they provide. It is vital that the
services reach the most needy members of our communities. For the
future, local authorities and the centres should focus on gaining a
better understanding of their costs, and on working effectively
with other agencies to get the maximum value from the resources
available through children’s centres.”
Notes for Editors
- The Government launched the Sure Start programme in 1998 to
improve the health and well-being of children before and after
birth and to support parents in their aspirations to work. The
centres combine early education and childcare, family support,
employment advice and health services.
- The government is committed to creating 3,500 Children's
Centres by 2010, committing £3 billion of funds until 2008, and in
2006 passed overall responsibility for the programme to local
authorities.
- There are currently around 1,000 centres. Most of the first
children’s centres have been developed from facilities that were
formed from earlier initiatives for improving services for young
children: Sure Start local programmes, Neighbourhood Nurseries and
Early Excellence Centres. A small proportion were formerly nursery
schools, health centres or have been created from scratch.
- Press notices and reports are available from the date of
publication on the NAO website, which is at www.nao.org.uk. Hard
copies can be obtained from The Stationery Office on 0845 702
3474.
- The Comptroller and Auditor General, Sir John Bourn, is the
head of the National Audit Office which employs some 850 staff. He
and the NAO are totally independent of Government. He certifies the
accounts of all Government departments and a wide range of other
public sector bodies; and he has statutory authority to report to
Parliament on the economy, efficiency and effectiveness with which
departments and other bodies have used their resources.
Press Notice 73/06
All enquiries to Neil Gadhok, NAO Press Office:
Tel: 020 7798 7020
Mobile: 07796 940 746