Sure Start Children’s Centres

Ben Gummer Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom]

Yes, I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comments. I am a firm believer in localism. My experience of Sure Start centres is that they evolve in a way that suits their community, and it is for county councils to support that need as necessary in their community. I am not a big fan of centralism or, indeed, of ring-fencing for that very reason, so I share his concern about the decisions that councils may be taking to cut those services, which I very much regret. Having said that, there is enormous room for improvement in Sure Start children’s centres, which could become more effective. Those centres need to focus strongly on that because otherwise the incentive for councils to continue to fund them at current levels simply will not be there.

That brings me to my final point, which is about the call for better evaluation. OXPIP, the charity that I have been closely associated with for many years, has always had rave reviews from social services, health visitors, GPs and families in Oxfordshire, where it operates, but we have not been able to have a random control trial, which is the gold standard in quantitative evaluation because of the ethics of intervening with one group but not another. What about the outcomes for the group of families whom we know are in difficulty but do not help? The ethics around this issue mean that quantitative evaluation is a problem. If the Government are to do anything to help Sure Start children’s centres to make the right decisions and to make progress in the most effective areas, they need to put resources into serious studies about how effective different early intervention programmes are. I strongly support the work of the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) in looking into those issues and in trying to evaluate which programmes are more helpful than others.

[Ben Gummer (Ipswich) (Con)]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. I have been spending a lot of time in primary schools in my constituency in the past 10 months and reception teachers have told me time and again that they can almost tell which Sure Start centres are doing good work and which are not really adding much value. However, that is the extent of their knowledge because the evidence is anecdotal. We really need some proper evidence so that Sure Start centres can be evaluated and best practice can be spread.

[Andrea Leadsom]

That is exactly right. County councils and directors of children’s services are very aware of the potential value of Sure Start children’s centres. My director of children’s services in Northamptonshire would love to get even more value out of them and would welcome better research showing what would work better, rather than having to go it alone in those areas.

Let me conclude with a small plug. I plan to launch a pilot scheme in 2011 for a Northamptonshire parent infant project that will mirror what OXPIP has been doing so successfully for 13 years in Oxfordshire. Working closely with children’s centres in Northamptonshire, I hope to show, prove, demonstrate, document and evaluate the value of really early intervention services in making a real difference to the quality of families’ lives.