The need for joined-up thinking has been a recurring mantra under New Labour. Services like childcare must be integrated and targeted and funding arrangements streamlined, we are told, to maximise efficiency and effectiveness. And yet, according to the Daycare Trust, as one Government initiative has rolled out after another since Labour came to power in 1997, the number of separate strands of childcare funding has grown to more than 55. The many tributaries have never come together in a steady stream.
So there was understandable optimism among practitioners when Chancellor Gordon Brown announced in July's spending review that the Government was bringing together responsibility for childcare, early years and Sure Start within a single inter-departmental unit. He pledged to create children's centres to 'support the integration of good quality childcare with early years education, family support and health services' in the 20 per cent most disadvantaged areas, and to give local authorities an enhanced role in provision (see box for details) A DfES spokesman said, 'Children's centres will build on and bring together existing programmes like Sure Start, Early Excellence Centres and Neighbourhood Nurseries. The Government wants to develop a more coherent approach to the development and delivery of integrated services for young children and their families. Children's centres will be at the heart of this effort.'
Here was paper evidence, at least, of a more cohesive approach - something that leading figures in the sector had pressed for in representations to the childcare review undertaken by Downing Street's Performance and Innovation Unit, whose report will be published in the autumn.
Gillian Pugh, chief executive of Coram Family, one of the most established charities working with children in deprived areas, hopes that the creation of the new unit will lead to 'a coherent pot of money' and an end to the nightmare scenario of providers spending inordinate amounts of time making multiple applications for funds and then having to account for them all separately while they struggle to develop initiatives, such as neighbourhood nurseries, which have not had enough time to come to fruition.
Rosemary Murphy, head of the National Day Nurseries Association, welcomes the pledge of additional resources but queries the relationship between the children's centres and the Neighbourhood Nurseries initiative, which the NDNA has embraced. She asks, 'Will this lead to a slowing down in development of the neighbourhood nurseries?'
Vacuum of uncertainty
The Government has done nothing to dispel the confusion. There has been silence so far from the Treasury and the DfES on exactly how children's centres will be set up and how they will relate in practice to previous initiatives. It is curious that such an apparently landmark declaration on the future care of children should be followed by a vacuum of uncertainty, and some practitioners feel it suggests an alarming complacency.
Eva Lloyd, chief executive of the National Early Years Network, says, 'There is a lack of coherence in the way different initiatives are rolled out, and this hasn't gone away. No one wants to knock the idea of children's centres, and we are totally supportive, but nothing has been said beyond working together or under the umbrella of other initiatives.
The details still need to be filled in, not just by the Government. We all need to do a lot of hard work on this.'
She questions how the Government can give specific pledges on the number of new childcare places - a total of 550,000 by 2006 - when the Office of National Statistics cannot produce daycare statistics for 2001/02, apparently due to confusion following the introduction of Ofsted inspections.
However, Ms Lloyd emphasises that the concept of children's centres is not new and, while the Government's vision may still remain blurred on the issue, plenty of practical experience exists on the ground. Gillian Pugh says she also has been writing and speaking about children's centres for more than 20 years, following her involvement while at the National Children's Bureau in the evaluation of similar centres set up during the 1970s. And the idea of the centres has been supported by the Daycare Trust and the Kids' Clubs Network -the latter plans to create 100 children's centres itself over the next three years.
Model centres
Anne Longfield, chief executive of the Kids' Clubs Network (KCN), says it plans to model the centres on the half dozen currently operated by Hammersmith and Fulham borough council in London, which were created following a best value review by Lynn Bean, the council's principal officer for childcare, learning and play, and her colleagues. She says, 'Our Distillery Lane Children's Centre is a refurbished old adventure playground site, which has an IT room, a large games hall, a room for arts and crafts, a sensory room and a garden where the children have their own club and grow vegetables and herbs.'
The centre offers after-school and holiday care with the same team to ensure continuity for parents and children. Daytime activities include baby massage, backed by Sure Start funding, and next month it will open a toy library for special needs children with money from the local early years partnership. However, none of the Hammersmith centres has a nursery, although Lynn Bean says there would be no barrier to their addition.
'The reason the children centres' model has been chosen is because things work better if they are joined up,' says Anne Longfield. 'You get better value in terms of outcomes for children, families and communities.'
Previous initiatives aimed at helping disadvantaged areas, such as Sure Start, Early Excellence Centres and Neighbourhood Nurseries, have often ended up targeting the same families and 'in a piecemeal way', she says.
'What we feel is that the money out there to support these services is not being co-ordinated properly at the moment. Our aim is to provide a vehicle to bring that all together.' KCN has received 'expressions of interest'
from several quarters, and the development of children's centres could involve collaboration with early years partnerships, housing associations, health trusts and other local organisations. It has not received direct funding to set up the centres but plans to raise funds with organisations for a development worker in each locality who will, in turn, raise funds for the centres. KCN will provide back-up support in the form of development expertise.
School bases
KCN envisages the children's centres providing 'a range of co-ordinated childcare services including nurseries, out-of-school clubs, play and youth provision and a childminder network'. They will also be a resource base with information on all aspects of childcare, parenting and special needs, together with 'satellite' services such as health visitors, children's dentists and clinics.
The proposed centres appear to dovetail with the Government's pledge in the latest education White Paper to introduce legislation to allow school governors to run community facilities. While the Government's commitment so far is to create around 1,600 children's centres in the most deprived areas, Anne Longfield believes the 'extended schools' proposal could pave the way for children's centres to be 'rolled out' more widely.
Kathy Sylva, professor of educational psychology at Oxford University, advocates the one-stop Early Excellence Centres, such as the one run as a partnership between Coram Family and the London borough of Camden, as the model for children's centres in more densely-populated poor urban areas.
She argues that it is logical to site area-based centres for needy communities in primary schools. 'You have the buildings, you have the head and there should be a specially-designated school governor to take care of the early years services for children and families,' she says.
Gillian Pugh agrees that 'it would be crazy to start from scratch' and not take advantage of existing centres and schools that are already working with children and families. 'We should ask them to be more flexible and creative and to think more laterally,' she says. The use of schools does not just make practical sense; she points out that research has shown the benefits of integrated children's services with a 'strong educational focus'.
But she also hopes the fusion into an integrated department will hasten the end to the apparent division between 'those who see daycare as principally a means to get women back to work, and those who see early education as the best start in life for children'.
Only time, pressure on Government to fulfil its side of the bargain and the tireless commitment of all those working in the sector, will tell whether the July 2002 spending review marks a sea change in the provision of child and family services. However, without a cast-iron guarantee of ongoing funding, rather than woolly commitments to start-up cash which have bedevilled other initiatives, the lofty aims set out for children's centres will not be fulfilled, and this latest proposal will do little to end what the Daycare Trust terms the 'childcare lottery'.
KEY POINTS OF THE SPENDING REVIEW
Following the inter-departmental childcare review, the Government has decided to:
* Bring together the responsibility for childcare, early years and Sure Start within a single inter-departmental unit with a total budget of 1.5 billion by 2005/06
* Double spending on childcare by 2005/06
* Set up children's centres in every one of the 20 per cent most disadvantaged wards by March 2006 so that 300,000 children and their parents can access integrated health, education and other services
* Ensure a further 250,000 childcare places are created so that by 2006 there are 550,000 children covered
* Devolve funding and responsibility for delivery of services to local authorities.