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Editorial: Children's centre concerns must be answered

1 min read
Norman Glass, who as a Treasury official in the late 1990s was one of the architects of Sure Start, voiced serious concerns about the Government's plans for children's centres and childcare when Children Now interviewed him back in July 2004.

Although the Government talks about "Sure Start principles", Glass believes children's centres will not have enough funding to realise those principles.

He is particularly worried that what money there is won't be ringfenced.

He mourns the loss of community-level governance and autonomy as Sure Start mutates into children's centres. He believes the pace of development is too fast and that the models for creating true inter-agency collaboration are not sufficiently developed or robust, especially when it comes to unlocking funding from agencies such as health trusts.

He got a loud cheer when he voiced those concerns again at our children's centres conference in October. Glass was clearly giving voice to the deep-rooted concerns of the assembled programme managers and others involved on the ground. And nothing that has been announced since then has done much to reassure him.

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