Isn't it time to start finding out if Sure Start children centers work?

The reinvention of the UK’s Sure Start prevention program as a platform for creating a children’s center in every community has come under the microscope of the Government's Public Accounts committee.

But even an otherwise eagle-eyed team of parliamentarians, whose job it is to ensure public money is wisely spent, appears to have missed an opportunity to repair the lack of clearly defined, long term evaluation of the flagship project.

The financial scrutiny has been particularly pointed because the decentralizing principles on which Sure Start was set up in 1998 will mean that English local authorities hold management responsibility for the new development phase, when not all have have lived up to Government expectations.

MP Austin Mitchell, for example, pursued the Sure Start team’s leaders for guarantees that the "original impetus, ethos and achievement" would not be diluted. How could anyone be sure, he asked them, that money would not be transferred to the broader purposes of the 3,500 new centers, to the detriment of pre-schoolers in disadvantaged families who were the original, primary target of support.

In this vein, the response to Sure Start’s progress has been markedly mixed. The size of the investment generated a great deal of enthusiastic excitement. But the diversity of the provision and the failure to commission evaluation sufficiently robust to demonstrate the impact on children's development have been the cause of growing controversy.

The Committee’s report Sure Start Children's Centres [1] highlights several areas of concern, but even after such close examination and with a new phase of expansion beginning, the lack of rigorous evaluation continues to go almost unnoticed.

MP Helen Goodman got as far as reminding David Bell, then Permanent Secretary at the Department for Education and Skills, that when Ho Chi Minh was asked what he thought of the French revolution, he said, "It's too soon to tell." "Are you really saying that about Sure Start?" she asked him. But no-one pressed him as to how any long-term view would be formed.

With Austin Mitchell’s qualms to the fore, the committee’s report formally raises a number of key questions. How can the focus be retained if the provision is spread so wide? How can children's centers become the focus for all early years services without adding to the clutter that families have to negotiate? How will the expanded provision fit with plethora of services already offered by the voluntary and private sectors and widely used by parents?

Reflecting an emerging trend in UK thinking on children's services (UK children's policy shows signs of changing direction, 20 August 2007 [2]), the report also notes concern about about whether there is sufficient funding to train the necessary 3,000 or so extra early years professionals and center leaders. It acknowledges that the management skills needed do not necessarily go with a detailed understanding of early childhood development.

The UK Government is looking for a better integration of health services into early years provision, and these partnerships are also explored in the report. As Deb Daro's research in the US has shown (New study brings home the value of the health visitor, 1st May 2007 [3]) finding a fit between children's centers and the UK's universal and well-regarded home visiting program for newborns is likely to have an impact the effectiveness of both.

The big money question for the UK politicians is whether devolving budgets will lead to greater efficiencies or to money being lost in other local authority expenditure. The larger English authorities spend $2bn and upwards on children. In this context, expenditure on children's centers is small beer.

As for the lack of evaluation, the setting up of Sure Start was fiercely criticized by Michael Rutter in a recent article ("Is Sure Start an Effective Preventive Intervention?" Child and Adolescent Mental Health, 11, 3, 135-141, Sep 2006). Opportunities to learn about impact, to contribute to the understanding of child development and so to enhance the program's effectiveness had all been passed by in favor of diversity and local ownership, he argued.

The same dilemma now faces English local authorities. Experience would suggest that devolution of budgets greatly reduces the already slim chance of rigorous program design and evaluation. Will any local authority have the temerity to buck the trend and show the Government what might have been achieved in the first place?