Sure Start: A wrong turning.

Frank Field stated recently:

Consider Sure Start. This was one of Labour’s great initiatives, aimed at cutting into the cycle of deprivation that trapped all too many children in poverty. But the recent transformation of Sure Start into Children’s Centres signifies a major change in the programme: its focus has shifted from the poorest to all children.

If our society’s aim is to widen the life chances of poorer children, is this a sensible and defensible change?

Got it is one Frank.

A few years ago I was chair of a charity which ran a pre-school playgroup specifically for children of poor families. The charity was called Panda and received praise from OFSTED for its exemplar family liaison work. It was mentioned by the then Tunbridge Wells MP, the hard-headed businessman Archie Norman, in an House of Commons debate as an excellent example of a voluntary sector organisation targeting real need in a way the broad brush of the statutory sector failed to do.

Then it was decided to open a Sure Start close to the Panda premises and it was agreed Panda would move into the new Sure Start premises as its own premises were to be demolished. The move never happened as Kent County Council insisted on an increase in numbers and that the group be open to all children.

Now we are told that there are a number of children at the local primary school with behaviour problems? Why is this? Did they go through the Children's Centre as the Sure Starts became known as? I bet if these kids had gone through Panda the problem would have been much reduced. An unholy alliance of Kent County Council, central government, aided and abetted by a voluntary infrastructure body, destroyed a charity which was targeting successfully children from poorer families.

Frank Field is correct: the change of focus was wrong.