Families in Totland, on the Isle of Wight, struggle to get around. As well as poor public transport, wages are low. "Some of our families are only a mile away but when you've got kids and no transport that can seem an awful lot further. That is why we use our outreach workers to get as close to them as we can," explains Sylvia Richards, committee chair for West Wight Nursery Children's Centre.
It's one of a number of children's centres that are putting a big emphasis on outreach work, something the government wants to see become a staple part of all centres' provision. A £4bn package of funding was announced last summer for children's centres, early years and childcare. Centres in areas where at least half the children are in the bottom 30 per cent of the population in terms of disadvantage will be able to employ two specialist outreach workers from this pot.
But because the money is not ringfenced, experts such as Liz Railton, director of Together for Children, are not sure whether outreach services will be properly resourced. "I'm optimistic that posts will be funded, but will there be funding to ensure they are properly supported? Will training and support be in place for when difficult situations arise?" she asks.
Graeme Tiffany, vice chairman of the Federation for Detached Youth Work, is also concerned whether outreach work will gain the funding. Based on the experience of many detached youth workers, he believes some children's centres may struggle to develop outreach services. "Some areas are very good at recognising the need for detached youth work as part of their service but others are not. It is mixed. Sometimes it is political, people don't understand its value."
Geethika Jayatilaka, deputy chief executive of 4Children, concedes that some financial managers are less enthusiastic about outreach work, but says its importance is increasingly recognised. "It is different from detached youth work because children's centres and the Sure Start projects that preceded them had a tradition of outreach work from their launch. It is part of the work of many centres, particularly targeting hard-to-reach groups."
A lack of official data on outreach work is another concern. Nobody's sure how many outreach workers there are and what training and support they need. In the Children's Plan published before Christmas, the government promised to establish standards for an effective outreach service. It has also promised more training for practitioners.
Already though, children's centres are developing different structures for outreach work to suit local need. At South Acton Children's Centre in Ealing most staff carry out some outreach work each week.
But at the Bushbury Triangle Children's Centre, in Wolverhampton, there is a team of dedicated outreach workers, including a full-time home visiting team manager, one full-time worker and five part-time home visitors. Of these, one specialises in health and another on speech and language. All still carry out work in the centre.
South Acton Children's Centre has been running outreach work since 2001, when it was originally a Sure Start service. It aims to engage with the high proportion of families living in poverty in the area. One way it does this is to carry out an initial visit to every family in the area shortly after a baby is born.
Support at home
"This is more of a generic visit but it establishes early on whether further visits are needed. Some people are quite happy to come in and use services at the centre. But some people don't like group activity and others need support at home," explains Gwen Watkins, project manager for the family and community team at the centre. She agrees that funding has been an issue for the centre's outreach work, particularly since it came under local authority management in 2005.
Since then there have been four job cuts in the team, which is now 22-strong and there is a greater emphasis on targets. "For outreach this has meant the work is more rigid, more about number of families visited, which gives us less time to be creative and look in detail at individual cases," she says.
Sylvia Richards, chair of West Wight Nursery Children's Centre's committee, agrees that being under local authority control stifles creativity in the outreach services on offer. A recent area of contention was when the centre wanted to carry out outreach work with families beyond the age of five.
"We were told that there was only money for those up to five. We thought, why should it be just up to five? We have some families with particular need, for example where there are mental health issues, and we didn't want to just end the work we do with them in the community at home when their child reached five," explains Richards.
So the centre looked elsewhere and last November won £500,000 of Lottery funding to provide two link workers for five years, who specialise in outreach work and helping families with children older than five. "The families needed extra support and this money has enabled us to offer that," Richards says proudly.
MY WEEK OF OUTREACH WORK
Paula Jeffries, home visiting and outreach project officer, Bushbury Triangle Children's Centre, Wolverhampton
Monday
Arrive at work at 9am. Do some paper work and then carry out a home safety assessment at a local family's home.
My job involves such visits, which assess safety needs in the home of a parent and arrange for equipment, such as fireguards and child gates to be installed, all free to the parent.
After this safety visit I carry out a home visit, which is a referral from a health visitor to a mother having problems with the behaviour of her young son. I offer advice and look at ways to control his behaviour.
Once back at the centre I spend my lunch hour taking one of the centre's computer skills courses. This is aimed at parents but because I have spent most of my career in social work I need to learn these skills.
In the afternoon a lot of my time is spent on the phone sorting out details of home safety visits and arranging for equipment to be available.
Tuesday
I do a family support visit, which is another referral from a health visitor. It's a second visit to follow up on areas we had discussed the first time round. It's meant to be at 10am, but no-one is there. I go back at 11am and have more luck. This type of thing is pretty typical in home visiting work, so I'm used to it.
The afternoon includes writing up notes from the morning visit and making arrangements with other parents about future visits.
In addition, I liaise with the local fire brigade, as I have arranged for a crew to visit a parents' group later in the week to talk about home safety over Christmas. I also lead our sensory playgroup session.
Wednesday
I spend all day in Birmingham taking another computer course, this time learning PowerPoint. This is something that we are increasingly going to need and it is important that I keep on learning computer skills. It is rare that I take two computer courses in one week, but it does happen.
Thursday
It's the day of the fire visit. The fire brigade has a good budget for fire prevention and during their visit they speak to the parents about the importance of smoke alarms and situations like chip pan fires.
In the afternoon I have another family support meeting with a mother, but this time she wants to come into the centre. It's not a good situation at home and she feels more comfortable coming in. Where we hold the meeting is very much up to the parent.
Friday
Another home safety visit to a local home in the morning. In the afternoon I attend a story time session being taken at the centre by a local library worker. At the session is the mother I had seen at the beginning of the week whose son has behaviour issues. It's good she attended, especially as some of the reports show her son's behaviour is better at nursery than at home. After that session I meet with her to have a more detailed conversation about how she is.
