Children's centres 'losing universal provision ethos'

The report, carried out by a University of Oxford research team on behalf of the Department for Education (DfE), found that almost half of staff questioned are dealing with families with complex needs who are already involved with social services.

Staff said they were concerned about losing their ability to identify families right on the threshold of needing intensive support.

The report warns that there is a risk of children’s centres losing their open-access services as a consequence of increased targeting of services towards the most vulnerable.

The study, which examined provision at 121 centres through interviews and questionnaires with staff and parents, found that three out of 10 centres had reduced services, a quarter (24 per cent) reduced their opening times, and more than one in five centres (21 per cent) reduced the number of locations at which they offered services.  

Researchers also found working life in many centres is typified by “volatility in staffing, increased workload, pressure and responsibility”.

And staff told researchers that training to deal with such highly intensive work with families with complex needs is “inadequate”.

Staff are also concerned that the switch away from universal provision is increasing families’ sense of stigma in accessing services and is hindering the ability to identify vulnerable “families with needs just below the radar of social services” at an early stage.

“Staff fear that reducing open-access activities (in favour of targeting) will deny open-access services to families who have less complex needs but are still poor, while at the same time stigmatising the higher need families who use the centre,” the report states.

Partnerships between children’s centres and other agencies, such as health, who have also suffered funding cuts, were also found to be strained.

The report details “tensions with particular partnerships in terms of communication and data-sharing, misunderstandings over professional roles and backgrounds, and practical difficulties over funding arrangements and availability.”

“Multi-agency working was considered by staff as requiring improvement,” the report concludes.

Senior researcher Professor Kathy Sylva said: “Our study shows that staff and managers in children’s centres are working incredibly hard to meet the needs of their communities.

“Yet they admit, and our qualitative data shows, that their overall capacity is over-stretched.

“Delivering the impressive aims of the children’s centre programme will require intelligent management and optimisation of resources to enable centres to continue to offer effective services that support families in poorer areas.”