Sure Start pioneer dies

Norman Glass, of Croydon, London, who passed away after being diagnosedwith cancer last summer, began his career at the Department of Healthand Social Security following graduation from Trinity College Dublinwith a first-class honours degree. He was involved with major reforms ofthe social security system before becoming deputy director of publicservices at HM Treasury and chief micro-economist in 1995. It was duringhis time at HM Treasury that Mr Glass helped to establish Sure Start,which was based on an American project called Headstart.

The original Sure Start programme, launched in 1998, proposed around 200local projects, concentrated in deprived areas, which aimed to bringtogether core programmes of health, early education and play. However,in an article published in the Guardian in January 2005, Mr Glasscriticised the programme's hasty expansion to 550 projects in 2000,believing that it would have been better to wait and learn from theexperiences of the original projects. He also wrote of hisdisappointment at seeing the philosophy of Sure Start shift from that ofa child-centred programme, 'owned' by local parents, to a scheme with an'employability agenda' which concentrated on rolling out as manychildcare places as possible to support working mothers.