It has been hard to quantify the scale of likely cuts to children's centres nationwide, as individual local authorities struggle to apportion slashed budgets that are no longer ring-fenced.
Five centres to go here, opening hours to be reduced there, schools to be asked to take over centres elsewhere - that's localism for you!
However, for opposition to children's centres closing to be effective, we need to have the bigger picture. Nick Pearce of the IPPR is right in his 'To the Point' column. The protests over Sure Start cuts have so far been piecemeal and muted in comparison with those over the forest sell-off.
So we hope that our survey of local authorities and their intentions to keep or close their centres, carried out with Daycare Trust and 4Children, will provide further ammunition for the fight against closures (see news, page 4). Only 40 per cent of councils will commit to keeping all their children's centres open over the next financial year.
Four of these local authorities talk to us for this week's Analysis article (pages 10-11), and explain how they are managing to preserve the centre network while dealing with funding cuts. Other councils should be interested to read about some forward-thinking strategies.
Further research by parenting club Bounty is also illuminating in showing the depth of parents' concerns about losing centres and services.
We now need to harness all this evidence and strength of feeling to make sure young children's needs are seen as important as those of the nation's trees.