I’m a great believer in the Sure Start programme. It offers real support to parents and gives children a better start in life. Sure Start is a government flagship programme to support families on low incomes through children’s centres in (as of October 2009) 3,151 locations. The target is at least 3,500 children’s centres by March 2010.
The National Evaluation of Sure Start points to a number of positive impacts for children. Parents of three year-olds in the Sure Start programme provided their children with a better home learning environment. These three year-olds appeared to have better social skills, and families living in Sure Start areas used more child and family related services than those living elsewhere.
In February 2009, the Department of Schools and Families published a survey of Sure Start children’s centres. This found high levels of satisfaction with children’s centres by the users. It also found that those parents of children using centres closely matched the local community – in other words it really is a local programme used by local people, and this helps create good community links.
There has been some concern that Sure Start is not reaching the most deprived families. This is always going to be a tough challenge, but the House of Commons Select Committee on Children, Schools and Families believes this problem is now being addressed: http://news.parliament.uk/2009/08/committee-launch-sure-start-childrens-centres-inquiry.
My belief, supported by the Daycare Trust, is that we are just beginning to see the impact of a coordinated approach to children’s centres. Early intervention and support can be of great importance to children and families throughout the country.
Good news – last week the DCSF announced the target of 3500 centres had been reached.
The NESS report was rather cool towards perceived benefits since they were based exclusively on reports from parents.
Should Sure Start be financing employment and training opportunities? I recognise the advantages of a one-stop shop but what sort of service is being offered? If Sure Start is doing exactly the same, or more, than a JobCentre, then duplication = waste of taxpayer’s money. If it is less, well, it’s a waste of money.
Or is Ed deliberately treading on Peter’s tootsies?
http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/pns/DisplayPN.cgi?pn_id=2010_0067
http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/research/data/uploadfiles/NESS2008FR027.pdf
I`m sorry my Lady, 3-4 year olds should be athome with Mum/Dad. As a parent I have seen as my 4 children of various ages grew up children younger and younger pushed harder. My youngest at 5 was coming home with more homework than the senior school kids, I told her don`t do it if you don`t want.
Can you let kids be kids for a while, let`s not leave the geriatric years as the only ones when we`re not under pressure to perform.
I don`t care if my kids become dustman, shelfstackers or even MP`s as long as they are happy.
We`re growing to be like the old USSR or China where we take 3-4 year olds away from parents and make them compete and learn, like gymnasts of the old Eastern Block. Then when they`re old enough there aren`t enough college places, they have to take on massive loans and then there`s no jobs.
Compared with other European Countries we are starting them earlier in formal schooling but we aren`t doing better are we ?
By sending kids to school earlier they are having to deal with bullying at earlier ages, primary exclusion statistics reveal this true. My youngest from 5-9 now has to deal with bullying regularly, teachers do not know how to deal with it since the law states a hands off approach is the best we can do. If you want your 3-4 year to go to school and have to deal with the stress of both formal learning and anti-social behaviour you`re welcome to do it but it`s wrong for the kid.
And if you want to see kids with good social skills go to the Council estates of Liverpool, Manchester and London because those kids have the best social skills…They have to stay alive, God knows social services haven`t helped a lot of them judging by the news of late.
I agree entirely with Carl on these subjects.
Children of under five should be at home if possible, with a parent, preferably mother.
After five they should be able to get home to a
Mother straight away after school.
I have seen so many examples of child neglect
since these new Laws were introduced and the different way of life innured, of neglect by middle class and professional mothers.
One most obvious example is two underfed and emaciated children who did not grow normally
due to their claiming they had eaten well at school, to their mothers, and claiming at school that they had eaten well at home, just about the oldest trick in the child’s book.
I wonder how many thousands of children are persuaded to do, or succeed in doing, the same, due to their professional working mother’s inadequacies, AS MOTHERS, and the impossibility of the “schools” being a mother substitute, and whose lives and growing years, suffer badly as a consequence of this wonderful opportunity for the status of their mothers.
My experience with my local Sure Start Centres has been a positive one. They put on fantastic programs that encourage the parent/carer to do things with their small children and get out of the house to be with other people.
We have been to puppet shows, a music program, made crafts, and a program that taught action games to get a bit of ‘movement’ into the child’s day.
They even put on programs for Adult Education for people who were not fortunate enough to get their GCSEs when they would have been in school. They have a creche for the little ones that is onsite.
The Sure Start Cnentres are also a good way to meet other parents who have children around the same age as yours. So all in all in my books the Sure Start Centres get an A* for all the work that they do.
Carl H, are we talking about the same thing?
Gareth: I am a SAHM (stay-at-home-mum) to both of my children, and in fact, I now home educate my older one after I de-registering her from school. Both of my children have 24/7 access to me and I also work at home too and am in the process of starting up another business! My experience of Sure Start Centres was their programs that they put on that are either 45 minutes to an hour long. The ones locally are not ‘day care’ centres where you leave your child and go to work, perhaps it varies by region or centre because the centres I know are in schools and simply do not have the facilities to provide “day care”.
I am only speaking on the Sure Start Centres that are local to me and I have done things in three of them, there are 2 within walking distance and then 2 more that are a short drive away. None of them have a facility for full day care. The parents are always with the child, unless it is a 2 hour program for the parents,then the children are closeby in a creche. Like I said, I can only go by my local experience. This type of situation is definitely good, they also put on a Saturday program for fathers and tots which is also a nice touch, Dad and child get to do those kinds of bonding activities and “socialise” with other fathers and their kids.
I must humbly apologise to Baroness Massey and thank Sue for pointing out the relative truths. I was misled by this
“All 3- and 4-year-olds are now guaranteed a free, part-time (12½ hours per week, 38 weeks per year), early-education place. There are over 37,000 settings delivering free, Government-funded, early education in the maintained, private, voluntary and independent sectors.”
The above appearing on the DCSF website.
It appears the Sure Start Centres are similar to the plethora of playgroups we had back in the mid 1990`s before a lot of funding was withdrawn from them and most, infact nearly all were forced to close.
Again I apologise for getting my information very wrong, I won`t make excuses.
BMD: As a grandparent with a child under three at a church run nursery my views on this are entirely supportive. I am not sure whether the nursery is part of the sure start scheme but I do know they suffer a shortage of funds and that permanent staff have been forced to accept temporary working to stay in their jobs as a prelude to a possible closure.
The state has a vested interest in my view in ensuring that all children up to the age of five are able to enjoy a loving relationship with their parents as well as acquiring and developing relationship and other skills through nursery attendance. These early years are both the bedrock that society sits upon and the foundation that keeps people on the straight and narrow when adversity strikes.
You mention families on low incomes and its always difficult to conjure up in the minds eye just who these families are. Your post also adds to what your side said during Prime Ministers Questions yesterday on this very same subject.
When it comes to low income families Mr Clegg in his reply to the Prime Minister mentioned what I refer to as the ‘little people’ the ‘Economically Inactive’. They are of no use to the ‘Three Blind Mice’ running for an electoral mandate because they pay no taxes or NI. Abandoned and forgotten by the state these miniscule hard to identify people see no purpose in voting so they don’t. According to Mr Clegg they number some eight millions.
There are many low income families where one partner has to fund nursery care. Is this what prosperity has brought us; a society where children are victims and of no value to the state because the state is unwilling to help a non working parent fund nursery care by use of a transferable tax free allowance? What use are working tax credits to these tiny people with their tiny tots?