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Taking the initiative

Can local authorities plan integrated early years services in the face of a profusion of new Government policies? Simon Vevers reports The Government extolled the virtues of service integration in its recent Green Paper Every Child Matters, but to early years practitioners the way in which its plethora of early years initiatives have been rolled out has often appeared anything but joined up. In spite of this contradiction, many local authorities have succeeded in forging partnerships and realising the concept of integration.
Can local authorities plan integrated early years services in the face of a profusion of new Government policies? Simon Vevers reports

The Government extolled the virtues of service integration in its recent Green Paper Every Child Matters, but to early years practitioners the way in which its plethora of early years initiatives have been rolled out has often appeared anything but joined up. In spite of this contradiction, many local authorities have succeeded in forging partnerships and realising the concept of integration.

For Barbara Trevanion, assistant director for partnership and community development at Peterborough council, the secret of success is to fashion Government initiatives to meet local priorities. She says, 'When an initiative comes in we look at how it is going to help us reach our strategic aims.We try to control the initiatives rather than letting them control us.'

Peterborough's unitary status makes this easier to achieve than in a county council, she says 'because you don't have the same level of duplication, there is a relatively small population and you can do your analysis of need more simply'.

With a background in social services, and as current chair of the early years partnership, a member of the local Primary Care Trust's (PCT) steering committee and a former manager in the Children and Young People's Strategic Partnership, Ms Trevanion is well placed to develop links between health, education and social care. When she became head of children's services three years ago, the Audit Commission had just undertaken a review of Peterborough's children's services. 'They told us we had a wealth of voluntary services and we were not making the best use of them. It was on the back of that review that we developed a strategic partnership to integrate our education and children's services,' she says. The strategy is now set to deliver five neighbourhood nurseries and three full-service extended schools.

Reshaping Government proposals to suit local circumstances has also been the touchstone for policy decisions by the local council and early years partnership in Newham, east London.

With most of its 20 wards designated among the 20 per cent most disadvantaged, the borough could have opted for a children's centre in each. But the capital costs alongside running costs would have been prohibitive.

Quintin Peppiatt, EYDCP chair and a leading figure in the council's early years cabinet, says that building 'one flash centre to the exclusion of 90 per cent of the borough' was not an option and ran counter to the authority's commitment to a holistic approach to children's services provision.

Instead, the council is developing 'children's networks'. This will involve the use of existing buildings where, with the help of the local PCT and other agencies, the core services normally provided in a children's centre will be accessible to people throughout Newham. The Rebecca Cheetham Early Excellence Centre in Stratford, where additional services include a childminding network, is providing a template for this development.

Like Newham, Derbyshire EYDCP is chaired by an elected councillor, Bob Janes, and this has helped reinforce the alliance between partnership and council. Mr Janes says a policy decision was taken to make the client's needs paramount and shun tradition in favour of imaginative ways of service delivery.

Describing Derbyshire's approach as 'a combination of good philosophy and downright practical delivery', Mr Janes says there was a recognition that early intervention work to prevent children 'coming within the orbit of statutory agencies' could be better handled by the voluntary sector, as 'it can be quicker and more flexible in those areas'. Links with the voluntary sector have been helped through EYDCP control of the Children's Fund.

With a third of its 150 wards identified as areas of disadvantage, Derbyshire has used its partnership ethos to plan eight neighbourhood nurseries and 15 children's centres. The Strategic Board for Children's Centre Development includes the voluntary and private sectors and has representation from health services, district councils and Sure Start programmes.

Amanda Jepson, Derbyshire's community regeneration manager, has the task of co-ordinating all the Sure Start programmes, children's centres and neighbourhood nurseries. She says, 'As far as planning and designing buildings are concerned, it would have been easier if we had known the bigger picture, known about children's centres while we were setting up services, as neighbourhood nurseries and the Sure Start programmes form the basis of what the children's centres will be.'

Ms Jepson identifies poor communication as the main stumbling block, even though PCTs are represented on the Derbyshire EYDCP. 'The main obstacle here is that sometimes the health authorities don't know what our priorities are and we don't know theirs,' she says. But efforts are being made to overcome this through local implementation groups covering the county's seven PCT areas.

In Derbyshire, Peterborough and Newham, unlike some areas of the UK, there is a strong bond between the local authority and the early years partnership. All three local authorities will retain strategic control over the delivery of services. Mr Janes sees the Derbyshire partnership becoming 'a more overtly consultative body'.

The readiness of all three authorities to embrace change, to be pragmatic, to overcome philosophical inhibitions to work with the private and voluntary sectors and, above all, to mould Government initiatives to suit local conditions, has ensured a consistently strategic approach to service delivery.