The 947m announced by children's minister Margaret Hodge on 4 April includes capital funding for the Government's drive to create 2,500 children's centres by 2008 and revenue funding, both for the new centres and to sustain those already in the pipeline.
Lesley Adams, head of early years and childcare for Birmingham City Council, said, 'I am disappointed about the level of capital funding because the Pounds 15.3m is almost the same as we have had over the last two years to develop significantly fewer centres.'
Birmingham has been given 41m to develop 43 new centres and to sustain 25 already in development. Ms Adams said, 'I'm pleased we have got some revenue funding to continue the centres we already have in place.' But she added, 'When you start doing the maths, it is not an embarrassment of riches.'
Stressing that Birmingham's target of 68 centres would be 'massively challenging', she said the council would be looking at ways of developing nursery schools, community day nurseries, Sure Start local programmes and neighbourhood nurseries not yet involved in the programme into children's centres.
Lesley Whitney, assistant director of lifelong learning and community with responsibility for early years and childcare in Derby, said the total of Pounds 4.9m capital and revenue funding would mean a tough battle to establish eight new centres, while sustaining the seven already in development. She said the core offer for children's centres meant that in the absence of new-build projects, existing services had to be adapted, but that only 250,000 to 300,000 could be devoted to each centre.
'We don't have a lot of providers in Derby, such as schools and nursery schools, with spare accommodation, so you are talking about building on to existing provision and you don't get a lot for that kind of money,' she added.
The Government provided 435m to develop the programme between 2003 and 2006; the 947m is for 2006 to 2008. A DfES spokeswoman said that 211 children's centres have been designated so far but that there would be 'a steeper trajectory' to the programme to fulfil the target of 2,500 by 2008 and 3,500 by 2010. She said it was not possible to say how much a children's centre should cost or how many would be created in a given area.
'The nature of children's centres varies, depending on areas. Some will be new-build, some will involve just tweaks to get services up to scratch. A lot of local authorities have created a lot of near children's centre-type provision.'
Sandra Shears, a Sure Start manager in Ipswich, said the building for her children's centre had cost 1.2m and it received 740,000 in revenue funding. Now the Government has earmarked just 8.8m, she added, to develop a further 26 centres throughout Suffolk. She said the levels of funding should spur 'a radical sea-change in the way services are delivered'. They should be 'more flexible and responsive and predicated on the needs of the child, not the service'.
Ms Shears said that multi-agency working at her centre, with an emphasis on early intervention, had already borne fruit with a reduction in the number of child protection cases. For example, when a young person is served with an anti-social behaviour order, she is alerted and can check whether there are any children aged under four in the same family, 'because we are often talking about a family in crisis'.