SureStart

At lunchtime I caught the end of Andrew Neil’s Daily Politics, and heard everyone praising SureStart as an answer to helping dysfunctional families (the issue of Harringey Council was in the news again today). SureStart is a programme I have a slight knowledge about, being friends with a former SureStart manager. It seems to be a good programme but there are problems with the way it is “controlled”.

About two years ago I met my friend after work (we were going to see a film I think), and before we set off she showed me round one of the centres. It had been built onto a school. The centre was a good size and was very well fitted out, but I couldn’t see how it cost £11 million (or even one million).

Inside there was a Reception, a large children’s library (with a play area, all well designed), two medical rooms (“this is where a lot of work is done”), a big hall or meeting room, a café area where parents can get meals, a “sensory room” with lights, textures, sounds (designed to stimulate children deprived of sensory contact); and four or five admin offices – it was all deserted at that time in the evening, but I got a good idea of how it worked.

SureStart was a government initiative set up centrally to help very young children in deprived wards throughout the United Kingdom. SureStart doesn’t really exist anymore as it has “gone over” to local government control. When I asked why this happened I was told it was a result of the Victoria Climbie enquiry, and the need to get different agencies working together more effectively.

In this region (which I won’t name) “going over” to local government control has meant the Council making all SureStart managers and supervisors redundant and putting in their own staff (so presumably all the experience has been lost?).

Worse still, the SureStart centre we had just looked at was in the wrong place! There had been a fierce (but covert) campaign carried on locally to move the site from a deprived ward to one that was not so deprived (this is not an isolated incident). All the money spent on architects plans and site surveys, hundreds of thousands of pounds, had been wasted.

The stress of having to fight local councillors had made my friend ill, wasted huge amounts of money and delayed the project getting off the ground.

I’m writing this up because it has been in my mind ever since I heard it.

PS I forgot to mention that after the councillors had diverted it from a deprived ward, she then had to battle against (and lost the battle) the headmaster of the school who insisted on it being located on his site instead of on an independent site.