Opposition debate on ringfencing Sure Start

[NicName]

I'm watching Opposition proposal debate that Sure Start should be ringfenced again from the Con Dem cuts:
news.bbc.co.uk/democracylive/hi/house_of_commons/newsid_8167000/8167404.stm
It's truly shocking that councils are having to close such services.
Sure Start allows mums to work, affords children a good start in life & delivers great value for money in reducing benefits. All parties have conceded that. Clegg promised to protect Surestart from any cuts.
Think Cameron should really be apologising to women for the swingeing cuts to Sure Start & Foundation Years spending that are going to affect millions of mums and kids & their opportunities for years to come, rather than patronising any that point out uncomfortable truths to him.

A bit of a contradiction that they are none judgmental but good at picking up on things that you might need help with ?

how?
the relationship is like a friend? so if they see your kid not eatin for example or one day you complainin in eneral conversation that you findin it hard for kid to eat, then they suest ideas or support roups etc, that are been offered in the centre, how is that judemental?

because you sit and chat to them they just et a better idea of whats oin on

So you sit and divulge information about yourself and then they tell you where you are going wrong and what you should be doing in their opinion, you can come on MN for that, no need to leave the house ;-)

Loving the idea that Surestart is an obscene waste of money. £7.7 million take-home for wotsit from RBS isn't- a bank bailed out by how much? Yes, lets stigmatise, I mean target it. And make those who can afford to, pay. Through that system the inland revenue set up, income tax. Absurdly revolutionary.

On what planet is it acceptable for the taxpayer to bankroll a day trip to the zoo for middle class mothers and their overindulged offspring?

The baby massage classes are also a joke.

I can see the point of the speech and language and parenting advice services, of course. But these services have always been offered by health visitors anyway.

bobbysmum_ on a planet with a progressive taxation system so that necessary services are funded in the same way as eg the NHS, 5 -18 education. That way, all people who need the service get it, those who can afford it, pay. It's been shown loads of times that means testing excludes needy people, tax+free at point of use delivers where needed. This was true of EMA, still saved money long term if paid to those not desperate.

Zoo trips for the middle classes are not necessary services.

i dont see my hv, after bad experiences etc, and i never saw the same one twice, so if i was havin issues i would be unlikely to say to a complete straner tbh.

i didnt say they ive their opinion on what you should be doin, what they would do would be to say, their is this nutrition roup at the centre on this date, or their is this parentin course i can refer you on to, or the people to help you with that issue are oin to be visitin the centre on this day, etc etc

I was appalled at the sort of shenanigans going on at one of our local SureStart Centres, especially Speech and Language therapists being drafted in to do sessions for parents and children without speech and language difficulties. My son has severe disabilities and has very little access to speech and language therapy. Also, they forced the closure of a local playgroup in order to make their nursery successful. The mums on the estate remain out of work, but now they have no playgroup either. The nursery is full of middle-class mums from the nearby mc area.

I am sure however, that there is valuable work being done. I totally agree it needs to be targeted to go to children who are classes as 'in need'. The lonely mc mums and dads can be served by ordinary parent and toddler groups. They really do not constitute a needy group.

Sure Start is a waste of money and should be axed without hesitation. Government funded zoo trips, baby massage classes and breastfeeding support groups. No wonder the country is in such an appalling fiscal position.

I think sure start should be kept but should be limited to disadvantaged children. In an ideal world it would be open to all but the money is not there.

Bakelite - the SALT support I had via Surestart wasn't via SALT dept, it was a hanen course delivered by an ed psych and a family support worker, technically it was a course for parents of kids at risk of language delay, but there were some other parents of kids with significant SN there as well as me (because of the general limited availability of NHS SALT for pre-schoolers). I must admit I was very at SALT staffed sessions to encourage dummy dropping. Mind you given the level of fobbing off re:SALT referral in my city (strict gatekeeping of referrals till 3, then best part of a year till first appointment)..., some open access SALT probably would pick up undxed SN.....

This 'Sky is falling' political analysis of the economy is nonsense. The debt/deficit was not caused by Surestart. It was caused by bailing out banks. It was not mentioned before the international banking crisis, credit crunch, etc.

No one said the debt was caused by Surestart, did they? It was just one example (among millions) of a huge waste of public money.

It wouldn't be so bad if it had been shown to work. But it has failed to improve the outcomes for the kids it was aimed at - just like the Headstart program in the US.

A total waste of money. And don't even get me started on the salaries that Surestart workers are paid.

totalchaos you had a referral at 3?
we had to wait until 4!! wel until they would aree to refer us we still havent had the initial assessment appt yet, and they said due to cuts they dont know if she will et salt!!

nailak - will send you a pm so as not to take the thread too far off topic.

I don't think it's about "what caused the problem", it's to do with "how do we spend now?"

Also, it's not actually about Sure Start - I think that's been used to draw people in to the debate.

The Opposition debate is actually about: should central Government tell local government how to spend? I'm actually uneasy about this as I don't see how central government could allocate to need better than the local authority (unless there were massive expansion in the size of central government), and also that if you take away the purse strings you take away responsibility. That could lead to either unnecessary spending (like zoo trips) to use a budget that cannot be diverted elsewhere, or inadequately funded services if the central grant doesn't meet the need in some areas (bidding processes to external bodies, which is what central government effectively is, tend to be cumbersome.

I think it would be far, far better to keep local spending local. They know better about the needs of their communities, the actual usage pattern of their children's services, and the wider local needs for the whole range of support services.

BTW, just to state the bleedin' obvious; ringfencing doesn't equal "no cuts", you can still ringfence a massively cut budget.

Ringfencing simply restricts how councils can spend.

This debate is about central versus local control, with Sure Start being used by the opposition as the football in a political game.

"The debt/deficit was not caused by Surestart. It was caused by bailing out banks."

Just to state what should be "the bleedin' obvious"...

The deficit, which is the crux of our current problem, was not caused by bailing out the banks. The deficit was caused by the Government spending more than it earned during the "good years" and therefore not having a hope in hell of making ends meet when things do go wrong.

Basically they were giving us far too much, things such as but not limited to SureStart, and charging us far too little for them. And if you have to resort to hitting the credit cards to pay the bills when things are as good as they're going to be, well, it should be obvious what's going to happen when your finances take a dip.

"It was not mentioned before the international banking crisis, credit crunch, etc."

Because the banks gave Labour someone to blame, they could tell you that it wasn't their fault but that big nasty banks were really responsible. And you believed it, so Labour's very happy with that. And as to the Tories, well they were just as bad, but they've now got Labour to blame for the problem rather than admit that when they were in office they were doing exactly the same thing.

So the Government either has to spend less, so things like SureStart get hit, or we all have to pay a lot more in taxes to make the books balance. Pretending that it's all the fault of the banks won't solve the problem and will just land our children in even deeper trouble in another generation.

I went to everything going at Surestart - as I had a year's mat leave and was getting bored. I went to baby massage, yoga, pilate, weaning workshops, cookery classes, the fruit and veg co-operative - all free, and all full of middle class mums who had the right idea with parenting to start with and weren't much in need of support.

My next door neighbour is 18 and had a baby around the same time as me, she went to no classes as she was scared it would be "full of people like you who know what they're doing"

It's all wrong.

Loving the argument that we should cut Surestart for the sake of our children! My deficit/debt phrase was clumsy; yes, the deficit was caused by not taxing banks, whereas the debt was caused by bailing them out. Look over the water at Ireland for the benefits of unregulated banks + low business tax. Hmmm...

Whatever caused it, the funding mechanism of "ring-fencing" is not a synonym for "protecting for cuts". It is a device by which central Government tells local councils how to spend.

Key question: are you more likely to get good services from your council acting locally in light of local needs and priorities, or from a central governmental ring-fenced mechanism?

"the deficit was caused by not taxing banks"

No...

The deficit was caused by society as a whole not paying enough tax when compared to Government spending. This isn't about the banks and every day that people swallow the lie that this is their fault is another day that the politicians responsible for the hole that we're in avoid the blame.

You can't have a European social infrastructure and an American Taxation system, which is what we've tried to do for most of the last 60 years, which is why we're in the hole that we are.

Badgers - point taken; I'm using shorthand; it is true that Barclays paid 1% tax in 2010. That could probably go up a bit. Corporation tax etc is more significant than income tax, as a general rule.