Surestart should be reistated for the good of the nation

I really don’t want to be goady but can I ask what Sure Start centres did?

When mine were little (a long time ago), we would have babies weighed at doctors clinics, take children to playgroups and meet ups at places suggested by the health visitor.

My school had a sure start centre attached but was always empty (great for school as they got to use the vacant room then). No one seemed to visit and courses were unattended.

Honest question: what was their focus?

@Molonty I was just checking online that the Children's Centres in my borough do still exist and there's loads of them plus various places that are known as "One O'clock Club" (essentially a Stay and Play place).

Good question and maybe this is what we have too as per my last post. We have a children's centre so maybe that was the difference?

mixed experience here.

SureStart opened locally in a couple of more deprived areas, and by all accounts did a great job at providing support support and advice, reducing social isolation etc. however, they couldn’t reach those with real problems (addiction issues, homelessness etc) as they just wouldn’t engage.

then they also opened a couple of centres in more well off areas here. It became a hangout for people who really didn’t need the support, more playgroups and coffee.

so I think given scarce resources it needs to be more targeted for those who really need it. But I don’t know how to do that.

I think that there needs to be support at both ends , the early years and the teen years. It's interesting on this thread that people have said it was used a lot by parents who didn't actually need it. And oddly enough I live in an affluent area and there are so many of these types of centres, all free and wonderful and honestly could be in areas used by people who really need them. I had to take my LO for her 12m check to one and I was really impressed by the classes they offered and the actual site. It was no different to the private membership club that we use.
We have SO many libraries around us and community centres, churches who also run really great programs. Just this Easter holiday I walked past our local church and was so impressed by the schedule of activities they were running.
Our libraries as well, run something daily. We then have 2 huge community centres with SO much going on. I really wish this type of community and investment into families were available everywhere.

This was exactly my experience, too.

So why would they make an effort to go to a sure start place?

It’s not the governments place to sort out people who fear authorities or don’t want to deal with housing providers. People shouldn’t have to be spoon fed.

The one near me was ok for a free play group but their courses were crap, it’s one of those places that like to claim they are busy yet 1 person will turn up to their course.

Genuine question - what's the difference between a "Sure Start Centre" and a 'Children's Centre" ?
My daughter is almost 16 and when a baby I took her to various Children's Centre's for a mixture of things - the health visitor weigh in sessions, mother and new baby sessions, stay and play etc.
These Children's Centre places all still exist.

Surestart or something along those lines is not a "nice to have". It's an essential.

I give up on ths thread

I dont know of people are deliberately missing the point. Social/community hubs provide a sense of belonging and community, reducing isolation. They are visible and accessible, a mixture of clients is good for everyone

Saying 'people just have to look harder' to find the same services is so far removed from that its impossible to compare

There are a number of things that happened simultaneously with ending ECM, which was autsterity, fewer and less effective SEN provisions, libraries closing, few leisure centres, all community provisions which left people without access to support.

This in turn can undermine what was put in initially as a support

We do have a lot of children experiencing poor mental health, I would suggest that would be more and worse if we hadnt had surestart for those children. But I woujld also caution that there is a trend now to pathologise normal feelings and that is muddying the waters. In addition CAMHS is not fit for purpose in most areas, Ive yet to work with one that is, they dont provide and arent set up to support young people directly (not very often anyway), they work to quite restrictive and 'one size fits all' therapy models which change according to what is the latest in thing and what has received funding.

All those things are wider contributors to MH outcomes but shouldnt muddy whether surestart was a success or not.

What policy, ever, has a 100% success rate? and its progressive too, get better GCSE results, then move on to better A level ones, better HE opportunities, better health outcomes.... its a moving goal of improvement.

Its a bit obtuse to just have one, relatively low aim.

...also, Labour in 1997, never mentioned Sure start in their manifesto, so i'm hoping Labour/Starmer will give us some similar policy surprises once in Govt.

Nope!
Early years intervention is an investment in the future, helping children and their parents educate themselves, eat more healthily, obtain work, break cycles of deprivation.

One reason why public services are screwed, is demand, reducing the demand upstream is essential or we will carry on a downward spiral of fire fighting, with nothing ever improving.

Once again, Austerity is proven to be at best short termism and at worst, has deeply damaged the country.

If Sunak can find £30 billion to cut National Insurance (or waste £26 billion on HS2 but then cancel it) then the money is def there for early years.

Agree with you - Surestart was great and made a huge difference

This is a common misconception about the scheme, but it operated it a variety of ways to engage with "difficult to reach" families, not just in terms of attending sessions.

It's not a "misconception", it's my direct experience. That the surestart centres were attended by the people who didn't need to be there. Now there's a separate argument that parents need increased support from professionals to parent properly, but there are ways of doing that which don't involve the expense of running, heating and staffing a building which they won't set foot in.

I was talking to dh about this sort of thing last night.
early interventions save society so much money. Keep a child on the straight and narrow, they don’t cost social services so much, they don’t cost hospital and police time, they don’t cost the prison service, they go on to have better employment prospects so pay tax rather than take benefit.
their children don’t repeat the cycle.

the government are in effectively fire fighting instead of ever making progress or catching up and solving issues.

I’m not sure . Surestart was great, I remember the surestart centres when I raised my first child (now an adult) and what a positive effect they had on the community. I also remember their massive reliance on volunteers and I think a lot of how so many parents at that time were sahps , something that has declined so much since the financial crash, austerity and CoL crisis. They couldn’t exist in the same way today for so many reasons.
The group that need help more urgently now are teens. For teens we need spaces, we need youth facilities, we need walk in centres, we need extra help in schools, we need low cost extra curricular activities , new educational options, better vocational training options… the list is endless.
Ideally we’d have both, but given the choice of where to allocate funds, I’d have to choose teenagers.

Sure start centres were fantastic and I was a young single mum, we had several in our town and I went to them everyday. However the vast majority of people that attended were affluent, married and already professionals on Mat leave from the richer outskirts that made the groups quite clique although having specific support workers helped dilute that a bit. I've spoken to people since who would have benefited from the group who were too intimidated to go as they had MH struggles etc to turn up in this room with all the 'Yummy Mummies' with their ££££ changing bags that cost more than what they had for their weekly food budget.

Once Sure start was shut down there was nothing to replace it either, most church coffee mornings had also gone so other than a few Bounce and Rhyme sessions at the library there were no free or cheap groups to go to just paid ones often out of town with no public transport connections.

However, DDs cohort are now the teens in mental health crisis so something in society needs to change somewhere. They had all of that fantastic input and a decade on are struggling what is going to become of those who didn't have that input in early years when they reach their teen years?

They are very important for both children and parents and it would be lovely to see them back but sadly with the state of this country I can't see it.
I used to go to Sure Start when my DC were little. They were extremely well used and I often got turned away due to groups being full.
They offered something that nowhere else did. The workers would sit and chat to you, they had quiet referral only groups that helped my ND daughter who couldn't cope with regular groups. As an isolated mum with pnd living in an area with few facilities they really were invaluable.