Sure Start: Major research reveals long-term health benefits of programme
Fiona Simpson
Monday, August 16, 2021
The Sure Start programme had long-lasting health benefits for children including reducing hospitalisation later in life, new research on the early years scheme has found.
New Labour’s flagship early years programme, which reached its peak in 2010 when it received £1.8bn in funding per year, “had long-term benefits for children’s health, lasting almost a decade after children have ‘aged out’ of eligibility”, a report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) states.
The study, which focuses on the programme during the 2000s, during its expansion, provides the first evidence of how this major initiative affected children’s health up to age 15.
Despite an increase in hospitalisations for children under one when it first launched, Sure Start led to a seven per cent drop in hospitalisations for under-fives by 2010.
In the same year, the initiative prevented more than 13,150 hospitalisations of 11- to 15-year-olds each year – an eight per cent reduction on pre-Sure-Start hospitalisation rates, the study adds.
It states that “the benefits of Sure Start were also longer-lasting in more disadvantaged neighbourhoods”.
“This suggests that Sure Start provision helped to reduce health inequalities,” it states.
The IFS, and the Nuffield Foundation which funded the research, say the results “highlight the importance of integrating a range of services during the early years to improve child health”.
The organisations and early years leaders are calling on the government to use the research to inform decisions about recommendations made in Andrea Leadsom’s First 1,001 Days report, including the expansion of Family Hubs.
Sarah Cattan, IFS associate director and a co-author of the report, said: “The savings from reduced hospitalisations up to age 15 offset around a third of the cost of the Sure Start programme – and that’s before considering any potential benefits in education, social care or crime. Ahead of this autumn’s tight Spending Review, these results are a reminder that policymakers should consider a programme’s potential for long-term savings, not just its up-front costs.”
Early Years Alliance chief executive Neil Leitch added: "The fact that the Sure Start programme is still paying dividends for children into their teenage years is yet more confirmation of what we already know – that investing in young children is not only the right thing to do, it is also a sound financial decision.
"Recent governments have shamefully let down children and families by not only cutting Sure Start services which reduce hospitalisations, and do much more good besides, but also by allowing funding for under-five education to dwindle to far less than the cost of delivering it.
"If the government genuinely cares about our national finances, it should have no hesitation in making a significant investment into early childhood development, since the high-quality early years provision all children deserve will more than pay for itself in the years to come."
