Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment his Department has made of the effect of Sure Start programmes on reducing levels of youth violence.

The department has not made an assessment of the effect of Sure Start children’s centres on reducing levels of youth violence specifically.

The Evaluation of Children’s Centres in England: Value for Money study, commissioned by the department, considered associations between the use of different services and reductions in youth crime more generally. Findings from this research were published in July 2016 at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/childrens-centres-in-england-value-for-money.