The review by the council's overview and scrutiny panel found that an average of 60 per cent of all children in the local authority area are registered with children's centres, and that registration is mostly carried out by community health staff visiting new parents.
However, the review found evidence that centres in more affluent areas had much higher levels of engagement than those in the most deprived areas. In Easington, which the report said was the most deprived area in the locality, only 40 per cent of children had contact with their local children's centre.
If Durham's 43 children's centres and 17 outreach centres could be given information about live births, then registration and contact could be carried out simultaneously, said the report.
The report recommended the development of an engagement/involvement strategy which would enable family workers to identify vulnerable families and work with them, spotting potential difficulties before they escalated or developed into more complicated issues.
Parents reported that the major barriers preventing them from attending children's centres were the opening hours of the settings which made them unsuitable for working parents, and groups being on at varying times for different age groups, which meant that parents with more than one child felt that they would be 'forever coming and going from the centre for each child'. The location of some centres was also found to be a major barrier, as it is not possible for families in some areas to access a centre without a car or bus journey.
Further information
'Early Years Provision/Sure Start Children's Centres Review' is at at www.durham.gov.uk.