Surestart should be reistated for the good of the nation

[Wavywoo]

The report out today that shows the longterm benefits of the Surestart programme confirms what supporters of the scheme said all along.

The government have grossly mismanaged public resource, and done children and families a massive diservice, in defunding Surestart, and yet claiming to have spent several times more on Early Years.

If surestart worked you'd only need it for a generation.

'That is the problem though. The ' hard to reach' families aren't looking.'

But why are the hard to reach families not looking? They have the same access to the internet, midwives and healthcare professionals as the middle classes?

Yes definitely. The hidden value of the sure start centres were the connections and networking they provided for people from all strata of society. As they were not means tested/ invite only my new parent group/ breast feeding group/ treasure baskets/ stay and play/ HV clinc etc was attended by a huge variety of people.

We had vets, midwives (as mum attendees), teachers, supermarket workers, hairdressers, a mum whose partner was in prison, an 18 year old and that's just off the top of my head. We met in groups more than once a week, supported each other by accident and I have maintained some of those friendships 14 years later (with a cross section of those groups) .

We had Christmas meals out and many people stayed close over the years and carried on meeting at school gates. Independent social events meant this spread to the dads and there was even a dad's stay and play at the centre on a Saturday that was well attended - they got bacon sandwiches which was somewhat a point of contention.

This was apart from the fact the centre workers were fab. As means to cross class lines it was invaluable and their destruction was one of the most damaging and shortsighted things the subsequent governments did. If you want society to look after and support itself you need to facilitate connections not break them.

We still have it in my part of the UK - can't say we've any better outcomes for it when compared with England. We don't get free childcare though - I think that would be far more beneficial. I briefly worked at SS and it was incredibly difficult to get the target groups engaged. I'm afraid I'm not convinced that pumping millions into SS is the answer to any problems.

The loss of the sure start centres was such a collosal act of national self sabotage. I agree, in the imaginary game were I call the shots, I'd sacrifice a lot of other projects to get it up and running again - but it would need to be protected in the long term from tinkering and destruction by the various governments who wash in and out. It's literally the only thing that would convince me to hold my nose and put aside my 'single issue' principles and reconsider my voting options.

Actually, I agree about the 18 year cliff edge, especially for young people with SENs that mean they are developmentally behind their peers, that is a very good point.

I suggest that there is "spare cash", but the current government are failing to use it effectively.

Whilst most families may have two working parents, a significant number do not, particularly with children with additional needs. That first year with a baby is a key time for development and is when one parent is at home for some if that period, and us all about bonding.

I don't believe that paid for childcare provision offers a comprehensive enough service, and those who don't access it don't get the benefit anyway.

And the hard to reach families often didn’t access sure start even when it’s available.

The families that need it already revive free early years education for their children from 2 years old, they can do free language and literacy classes then.

Health centres can provide advice about breastfeeding/nutrition etc if there was the will do do it properly.

We really shouldn’t need a nationwide chain of free service centres to tell parents that they need to brush their child’s teeth and all of that. The fact that some parents do need this is shameful, but it is not a reason to restart a device that provides free play groups to people who can afford to pay for them.

Having all of these services and freebies open to everyone in one convenient place regardless of need absolutely is a ‘nice to have’ and not an essential. Some of their services might be essential, the centres themselves are not.

absolutely this! Also working in Children’s Services - it’s awful the lack of provision and support for children and families. Surestart offered a joined up service in a local setting with health, education, play and support - it’s needed more than ever.

My 13 & 11yos benefited from the centres. I did a course when the second was youngest, priority given to more vulnerable mums. I found it useful as DS1 ended up experiencing speech delays and was later diagnosed as autistic, and that knowledge that I was doing things "right" was very validating. There were also some things like his attention span that were commented on that I ended up refering to in his referal.

The other mums had massive confidence boosts, practical support for things like breast feeding (one said that it otherwise wouldn't have been on her radar before). It did a lot to.

They did a lot to empower parents, give knowledge and confidence to parent their children and close gaps by the time children started school.

We're seeing issues in school children now from the disruption of the Covid years, a highly pressured, repressive education system.
There's widespread recognition that the social and personal skills of many young children entering school is declining. Sure Start can do a lot to close these gaps before starting school, rather than them growing. Not all families that would benefit do engage, but they were very accessible and pleasant, positive places and did pull in people that struggled to access parenting textbooks or more formal support. These are challenging times for many families, both financially and in the face of society changing such as shifts in technology.

I have worked in adult education and education adjacent for 25 years. It has been an issue no one seems to have an answer to. Adults who have services provided for them, promoted to them, told the benefits of ( not just sure start but family learning, free literacy and numeracy classes, training to get into work etc) but just don't access them. Some of it is due to poor experiences in the past, much of it is generational, in that they themselves had poor/ neglectful parenting, poor experiences of school, embarrassment etc. There is a theory ( linked to the campaign for a universal basic income, which I'm not convinced will do much apart from mean all prices will rise) that says that if people's basic needs of adequate housing and nutrition are not met, they don't have the bandwidth to make good decisions, so make poor ones or don't make decisions at all.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

That's an interesting suggestion - can you explain more?

...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.

And I share my lived experience.

Why do you think that people who attended in person didn't benefit or need the support from that?

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.

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.

Many reasons, that might include mental health difficulties, learning difficulties, lack of access to the Internet, fear of authority, lack of language skills, time being taken up with dealing with other problems to do with poverty eg dealing with a housing provider, dealing with domestic violence...many, many reasons.

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

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.