The message of the Government's interdepartmental childcare review could scarcely have been blunter - and the implications for early years partnerships starker. The Strategy Unit's document, Delivering for children and families, says only 30 - one fifth - of Early Years Development and Childcare Partnerships throughout England are working well.
It suggests that the twin tasks of strategic planning and meeting delivery targets should be removed from EYDCPs and handed to local authority chief executives, who 'might choose to retain the EYDCP as a consultative body where it works well, but equally might not'. Councils are invited to 'use alternative partnership forums' as long as the full range of childcare and early years interest groups and business organisations are consulted.
Sounds like a death knell for partnerships? Not quite.
Stressing that the Strategy Unit report is 'advice to Government, not the stated policy of Government', a DfES spokeswoman says that local authorities have now been told they have a requirement to retain EYDCPs and 'will need to work effectively with local partners, including EYDCPs'.
While partnerships are set to remain at the heart of the delivery process in Scotland and Wales, will EYDCPs in England, wounded by such strong criticism, now soldier on in a purely advisory role?
Defending the gains
There appears to be a broad consensus that local authorities would be foolhardy if they, or the Government, jettisoned wholesale the accumulated experience and goodwill built up since the inception of partnerships.
Naomi Eisenstadt, director of the Sure Start Unit, told local authority early years co-ordinators last month there was still scope for partnerships to work in a planning and advisory capacity. However, the Strategy Unit document is less reassuring. It gives chief executives latitude to consult local partners through EYDCPs 'or, ultimately, other means which suit them'.
Rosie Pressland, chair of Yorkshire's East Riding EYDCP, is adamant that partnerships must remain pivotal in any local authority-led childcare strategy. 'To do otherwise would be like starting again. It would be very foolish to throw the baby out with the bathwater. We work very closely with our local authority and I believe it will keep the partnership intact, because it recognises its worth.'
In York, manager of the early years and childcare service Heather Marsland says she and EYDCP chair Peggy Sleight have agreed to go out each month to schools, playgroups and childminders 'to keep our ears to the ground about what people want and to issue a positive message of the need for the local authority and the EYDCP to continue to work hand in glove'.
Partnerships, she says, were created out of the perceived failure of local authorities to engage with the voluntary and private sectors. They aimed to promote diversity and a mixed economy of childcare provision.
Ms Marsland says, 'Maybe EYDCPs were set up with an unrealistic expectation that groups of volunteers would be able to work wonders where local authorities had failed. What EYDCPs did was to force us to work in partnership, to hear the views of all those very committed people working in other agencies.'
She cautions against 'a swing back to the old days where all power was centred in the local authority', and urges councillors, 'Don't forget what a rich and rewarding experience working in partnership has been. It would be sad to lose that, rush back behind civic doors and slam them shut.'
Rosemary Murphy, chief executive of the National Day Nurseries Association, says the shift back to local authority control was not surprising, given the growing involvement of councils in Government initiatives such as Neighbourhood Nurseries.
For Bob Janes, chair of Derbyshire EYDCP, the Strategy Unit document reflects his belief that 'a properly led local authority partnership will get things done better and more quickly than a free-standing partnership'.
He adds, 'It would be easy for partnerships to become rapidly marginalised, but any local authority worth its salt is going to have a consultation process, because early years is such a complicated area.'
Lack of status
A suggestion in the Strategy Unit document to possibly remove current ring-fencing of childcare funding in local authorities where service delivery is strong, and lump together funds within the standard spending assessment 'or a suitable alternative pot', has rung alarm bells among some practitioners.
Julie Fisher, Oxfordshire early years adviser and chair of the Early Childhood Forum, warns, 'If financing becomes too complex to access and if the funding for the early years goes into a more general pot and the partnerships have to bid for it, then there are always going to be concerns that the money is not ring-fenced and that someone with less commitment to the early years will choose to spend it on something else in the local authority.'
With 20 years' experience working in local government, including eight years as a councillor, the National Childminding Association's chief executive Gill Haynes says she is all too aware that childcare has never been high up the political agenda and could be vulnerable to short-term political considerations at local level.
Sue Owen, director of the Early Childhood Unit at the National Children's Bureau, says that its research into partnerships has shown that while they have enjoyed considerable status at central government level, childcare was not regarded as a high priority in local government.
'Having a quasi-external body, like an EYDCP, was very important in raising the status of childcare. If that's lost then you could be back to relying on how important an elected member thinks it is compared with streetlighting or mending the drains,' she says.
Anne Longfield, chief executive of the Kids' Club Network and a participant in the Government's cross-cutting review, feels that the sector's funds are not in jeopardy since funding for partnerships goes through local authorities with 'an EYDCP banner on it'. She thinks that 'local politicians eyes tend to light up' at the prospect of expanding childcare provision.
Maintaining diversity
Ms Longfield acknowledges concerns about local authorities' readiness to embrace the private sector, but she says that a cultural shift in councils has meant a greater understanding of the voluntary sector's importance.
Gill Haynes believes involving both these sectors is vital. 'A concern we have is that if childcare goes into the mainstream within local authorities, without the structured input from the voluntary and private sector, we could lose delivery momentum,' she says.
Heather Marsland draws an analogy between the closure of corner shops and the resulting dominance of supermarkets, and the threat posed to a diverse, mixed economy of childcare from centralising control in the hands of town hall chief executives.
'We got rid of the fishmongers and fruiterers and rushed off to the supermarket, and it's only now that we see that the corner shop was a good thing. We need diversity.'
Rosemary Murphy says some local authorities have already indicated that they 'intend to open childcare facilities on every school premises, without any real consultation, without looking at what is around them'.
Arguments for change
Helen Penn, professor of early childhood at the University of East London, says that the failings of EYDCPs can be attributed to the lack of clarity in Government childcare policy, and to a range of contradictions - between central and local government, and between conflicting views about private and public sectors within partnerships themselves.
Anne Longfield says that the best partnerships have drawn together the various strands within childcare locally, but others have been 'quite isolated and detached and clearly not able to plug into the mainstream'.
She adds, 'The Government's childcare strategy needs a dynamic delivery machine and I don't think that you get that by setting up groups of 30 people.'
The formation of a smaller, executive group of largely decision-makers to ensure maximum efficiency in the delivery of childcare services is under consideration in Derbyshire. As he prepared to meet his local authority chief executive, EYDCPchair Bob Janes was confident that the DfES's new orientation is right. 'Having the chief executive at the heart of this process embeds early years and childcare nicely in the corporate sector.'
The coming months will decide in what form partnerships remain and whether they are effectively consigned to history or continue to be a vital linking mechanism in the local delivery of childcare services.