After weeks of a worrying ‘drip drip’ of information from local authorities faced with really difficult spending decisions, we became concerned that councils were beginning to think the unthinkable – the large scale rolling back of sure start services. Faced with this uncertain climate we wanted to find out what was really going on. The survey findings provide the first national data on the impact of cuts and do not make for comfortable reading. Cuts on this scale risk withdrawing crucial support for families at a time when there is a growing consensus that giving children the best start in life can tackle intergenerational disadvantage and reduce the cost of social failure. The impact of the closures alone would risk 60,000 families going without the help and support they need, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of families who could fall through the gaps in the net of a reduced service.
Many of us were relieved when the coalition government took the decision to protect the sure start budget in cash terms in the comprehensive spending review and welcomed the effusive support that ministers, including the prime minister, have lavished on the programme. While we had argued that the continued ringfencing of the money was important we hoped that given the growing consensus in favour of early intervention, centres would continue to get the resources they need.
Indeed, only today the government responded to the (now defunct) children, schools and families select committee report on sure start children’s centres saying:
‘Children’s centres have a crucial role to play in supporting cross-government priorities, for example, children’s centres play an important role in early intervention which supports Home Office priorities in preventing negative outcomes such as youth crime. The network of children centres is critical to our wider programme for children and families across government.’
But our survey results show that there is no room for complacency. Families across the country depend on sure start children’s centres to help get their children off to the best start in life but with without the ringfence these are decisions will be made in town halls. And the truth is that local authorities have some extremely difficult spending decisions to make and investment in early years services does not provide instant cash returns. Too often the true impact does not become clear until years later.
Formal evaluations of sure start children’s centres have often failed to recognise this context and have been used by rightwing thinktanks and others to argue that sure start has been a failure. Only a few months ago Durham University published a report which said that sure start had failed to improve early literacy and numeracy – a claim that is robustly rebutted by the coalition government today who point out that the overall number of children achieving good development has risen by 4 per cent with the gap between the lowest achieving group and the rest narrowing.
In response to our survey today, ministers have pointed out that they have provided adequate funding to keep all centres open and local authorities have pointed out that they are facing unprecedented reductions in their budgets. Both are right. But, while politicians play pass the political parcel, families are wondering whether their sure start centre will still be there for them this time next year. It is only a matter of a few weeks before final decisions are made. Almost everyone agrees that sure start children’s centres have a big role to play in the future: some bold decisions will need to be made to ensure that they are here to play it.