Schools should be at the center of a “fresh Sure Start’ rollout to replace the current “small-scale” Family Hubs program, a report co-authored by the former children’s commissioner has urged.
The report from Anne Longfield’s Center for Young Lives and Child of the North has proposed a national network of new hubs in educational settings that provide wraparound services such as school breakfast clubs, after-school and holiday provision, and access to mental health support for children .
The authors said the report, which is published this morning, focuses on how both the government and opposition “can reset their vision for children” to put their life chances at “the heart of policymaking and delivery”.
It warned that the government’s current “one-stop shop” for family support across 75 local authorities in England is “small-scale”.
‘No more isolated schools just focused on exam results’
“On current trajectories, it would take over 30 years to reach all the areas of disadvantage that Sure Start was going to reach,” the report warned.
While the Labor Party and the current Conservative government have announced plans to put breakfast clubs in schools, the report calls for further “joined-up support” to boost school readiness and “tackle the impact of poverty”.
It urges all political parties to commit to developing a national strategy in government and to encourage “holistic and collaborative working” between schools and local children’s services.
In a foreword to the report, Ms Longfield warned that the “days of some schools sitting in isolation from the rest of the community, shut up for the holidays, focused almost exclusively on exam results, should become a thing of the past”.
Sure Start was introduced under a Labor government in 1999, and was widely seen to have had a positive impact, especially on children in deprived areas, by offering health, education and childcare services all in one place.
Although Labor has not committed publicly to renewing the programme, the Center for Young Lives chair Ms Longfield told Your that she believes there is “an ambition within the Labor party for there to be a new version of the scheme”.
“Everyone’s very clear that [Sure Start] was a very visible indication of many labor values and I think those remain,” she added.
Ms Longfield said the task “is now urgent” and said the “unsustainable amount our public services are spending on responding to crises is a sign that the present system is failing many families and children”.
‘Additional funding’ needed for refreshed scheme
However, the report warned that teachers, school staff and current school budgets “cannot be expected to deliver this ambition all on their own”.
One of the report’s key recommendations is for the government to ring-fence funding for schools, ”so they can access and provide the programs, activities and services that meet the needs of local children and families”.
Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the NAHT school leaders’ union, agreed with the report that “it would not be sustainable to expect existing staff to do more” than they are already required to do.
“Any major extension of such provision will require additional investment and support for schools,” Mr Whiteman said, adding that schools are “not equipped to tackle the root causes of these issues alone”.
“I do think there is an issue for a new government to look again at what it deems to be acceptable funding,” Ms Longfield said.
She added that while there will need to be additional funding for “this kind of wraparound support network”, it will also be about “being creative” and “using our assets”.
School community services connecting on forward-thinking MATs
The report also highlights that many school-based community services are “ad hoc” and connecting on forward-thinking multi-academy trusts, local authorities or charities.
The report further calls for data to be used more effectively between agencies, which will “assist more timely inter-agency collaboration and better services”.
Shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson also proposed similar plans to use data to better support children when speaking at the Association of School and College Leaders conference earlier this year.
“Labor will bring a simple single number – like the NHS number – that holds records together, and stops children’s needs falling through gaps, within schools and between them, and between all the services that wrap around them,” she told delegates in March.
The report’s findings come as it was revealed that children who were living near Sure Start centers in the first five years of their lives performed better in their GCSEs than those who were not, according to research by the Institute for Fiscal Studies last month.
The IFS concluded that Family Hubs have a less clearly defined set of services and less funding – “just over £100 million per year, compared with £300 million per year in the first year of Sure Start”.
