‘Postcode lottery’

The first five years after birth are often considered the most important developmental stage in childhood and can strongly influence a person’s social mobility as an adult. It was under this widely accepted notion that the Sure Start programme was first founded under a Labour government in 1998.

Through the programme, thousands of Sure Start centres, which provided early childhood services such as learning, childcare, and parent education, blossomed and gave critical support to families in the most disadvantaged areas in the UK. The programme later covered all areas with the goal of providing universal access to its services.

But since 2010, swingeing Tory government cuts have hollowed out the programme that former prime minister Tony Blair called ‘one of Labour’s greatest achievements’. And a new report published this week (April 5) has found that these cuts to Sure Start centres may be much worse than previously thought.

The Sutton Trust report, Stop Start, revealed that up to a 1,000 Sure Start centres have shut in the last eight years – double official government figures estimating only 500.

The discrepancy between the Sutton Trust report’s estimates and the official figures, the researchers note, has arisen from the fact that there is no clear definition of what counts as a Sure Start centre.

“Due to local mergers, reorganisations and service reductions, many of the original centres have been converted to ‘linked sites’, which offer fewer services and are counted by some authorities but not by others,” the Oxford University researchers noted.

“Looking at just ‘registered children’s centres’ themselves, the drop since 2009 is more than 30 per cent. In areas that have not had closures, local authorities have had to reduce services and staffing.”

Tory cuts

And this massive reduction, the report’s researchers have said, is only the beginning as local authorities face ever-bigger cuts to their budgets. In a recent survey of 124 of the 152 councils in England , 20 per cent of councils reported that they planned reducing children’s centres in the near future, with another 30 per cent saying they expected to make ‘significant changes’ to the services provided soon.

The hollowing out of the flagship programme was accelerated in 2010, when the Tory-led government decided to no long ring-fence the budget for Sure Start and instead merge it with other programmes.

A massive reduction in local authority funding over the last decade translated into a 64 per cent fall in the ‘early intervention’ allocation from 2010 to 2017, which precipitated the wave of centre closures and ushered in an era of dramatically reduced services.

Now, many centres have shifted focus to a much wider age group, from 0-19 years, while others have targeted only the most deprived families, diminishing the universal aspect of the programme which some have said has contributed to the stigma of using Sure Start services. Many centres open only sporadically a few times a week. Disjointed provision throughout England has meant that families with young children now live under a ‘postcode lottery’, the Sutton Trust warned.

‘National scandal’

“Good quality early years provision makes a substantial difference in the development of children especially those who come from the poorest homes,” said Sutton Trust founder Sir Peter Lampl.

“It is a serious issue that the services that Sure Start centres offer are much more thinly spread than they were a decade ago.  Additionally, since 2010 there has been a precipitous decline of 30% in the number of Sure Start centres.  Thousands of families are missing out on the vital support they provide.

“The government should complete its long-promised review of the programme,” he added. “Instead of trying to serve all age groups, children’s centres should reconnect with their original purpose of promoting child and family development for the 0-5 age group.”

Unite lead professional officer Obi Amadi agreed.

“Sure Start centres have proven their worth in so many cases by giving families the support they need at such a critical stage of a child’s development,” she said. “It is a national scandal that this government – which purports to be all about ‘family values’ – has withdrawn yet another source of support for parents and their children in an austerity drive that has decimated essential services across the board.

“It has been proven how important the early years are for the adult of the future yet government policy remains contrary to this,” Amadi added. “We need truly universal access to accessible support for the early years population.

“Funding should again be ring-fenced and the government must carry out its long-delayed review of Sure Start to demonstrate the importance of the service and ignite a renewed sense of urgency in bringing these centres back to the flagship national programme it once was.

“The children being born now will be alive in the next century – we want them to be as healthy as possible and give them the best start in life. They are our future after all.”