Labour unveils plans to overhaul Sure Start and child protection
Neil Puffett
Tuesday, March 3, 2015
Shadow children's minister Steve McCabe speaks to CYP Now about Labour's plans to boost the number of childcare places at children's centres and develop a cross-government unit to improve safeguarding systems.
As general election campaigning begins to gather momentum, Labour has come out with two significant policy announcements relating to children and young people.
Following shadow education secretary Tristram Hunt's pledge to re-open scores of mothballed children's centres to provide 50,000 additional childcare places, shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper unveiled plans to tackle child abuse through a new child protection unit based within government.
CYP Now spoke with Labour's shadow children's minister Steve McCabe to get the detail behind the proposals.
Sure Start
Tristram Hunt wants to "save Sure Start" by providing 50,000 additional childcare places in children's centres that have been mothballed or closed in the past five years.
This will be done by putting an obligation on local authorities to provide access to childcare, while at the same time encouraging them to allow charities and local providers to run children's centre services.
"We're going to put the lights back on, get the kids back in and restore the founding purpose of Sure Start," Hunt proclaimed.
But, in light of the fact the founding aim of Sure Start was to give children the "best possible start in life" through, not only childcare, but also health services and family support, will simply pledging to create childcare places really achieve that aim?
On its own, no, McCabe concedes to CYP Now. He says the eventual aim is for re-opened centres to provide holistic services to those families that need them, but Labour does not believe it is the government's place to dictate how this happens. Instead, the hope is that by re-opening centres and attracting those families in need of help and support, local agencies will react accordingly and provide appropriate services.
"It probably isn't that helpful for a government to lay down a series of specifications," McCabe says. "Partly down to financial constraints and their evolving role, it's not down to local authorities to say a children's centre will have this.
"It is for (organisations like) public health bodies, clinical commissioning groups, voluntary groups, and local safeguarding children boards to determine the kinds of services for specific areas.
"If the centres are closed down, there is no place you can guarantee getting in touch with the families."
But what of the premises themselves? Have some not been sold off or put to other use, and can a mass re-opening of mothballed facilities really be done at no cost to local authorities?
McCabe says there are now 720 fewer Sure Start centres than there were in 2010.
"We know there are some that have been put to other use, but quite a large number have been mothballed," he says.
"I can't say there won't be any costs at all. At the moment, it is costing local authorities to keep these buildings empty - through paying security and maintenance costs.
"There are organisations that are willing to offer childcare places at no rent, or peppercorn rent, and take on the responsibilities the local authority is currently bearing, but getting nothing in return."
Child protection
Central to the party's plans to tackle child abuse is the creation of a "child protection delivery unit", which will be run jointly by the Department for Education and the Home Office, but which Cooper said will "work across the government to promote a more joined-up approach between departments and to encourage more collaboration and information sharing at a local level between police and other agencies".
McCabe likens the concept to the coalition government's existing Troubled Families Programme, which was initially backed with £448m of government money to turn around 120,000 families between 2012 and 2015. In 2013, it was announced it would be expanded to help an additional 400,000 families between 2015 and 2020, with £200m of further funding earmarked for 2015/16 alone.
McCabe says the ambition would be to get cross-government funding to achieve specific goals in a similar way during the next parliament.
"The troubled families initiative, although grounded in the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG), is funded by six different government departments and has a series of targets to bring about," McCabe says.
"In much the same way, we are looking at having a child protection initiative that would bring together government departments, including the Home Office, Ministry of Justice and DCLG, led by the DfE.
"It requires a degree of co-operation from cabinet ministers and other key ministers who have to be willing to give up a little (money).
"To be fair to the present government, they have done a good job of pulling the troubled families initiative together.
"It commends itself very well to what we have in mind."
McCabe also believes the unit will galvanise focus on improving child protection systems.
"When Michael Gove became Education Secretary, he scattered responsibility for children and families to the four winds, choosing to have a very narrow education department," he says.
"As a consequence, it has been difficult for anybody to get a grip of child safeguarding ever since.
"What we are looking to do is have a better co-ordinated and more coherent strategy for dealing with the overall question of child safeguarding.
"That is something that hasn't been present since the children and families element of the DfE left."
Children and families
Although there are concerns about a lack of focus on children and families within the DfE, Labour has no plans to reinstate the old Department for Children, Schools and Families.
Instead, the DfE will take a "much more active role" in issues with children and families.
"We are beyond the days when responsibility (for children and families) can be exclusively defined to one area of government," McCabe says.
However, a section of Yvette Cooper's speech announcing the plans, in which she highlights a need to "make sure every child matters and every child is heard", suggests the party remains committed to returning to the fundamental principles of its landmark Every Child Matters framework.
"Every Child Matters was one of the finest positions of the last government. The tragedy has been the dismantling of that reflective approach," McCabe says. "I think Yvette Cooper was stating very clearly that a return to Labour would be a return to that philosophy."
Cooper's speech also indicated that requirements for professionals to report child abuse - so called mandatory reporting - will be introduced.
McCabe says any scheme along these lines will focus on senior staff, rather than frontline professionals.
"We are not interested in every single teacher, teaching assistant, social worker or doctor looking over their shoulder," he says.
"If you look at Rotherham, what was particularly perplexing was that there were people in quite senior positions who just turned a blind eye, who should have been asking questions of junior staff, and should have really known what was happening, but didn't want to know.
"We are looking at seniority and a requirement for those people to be doing the job they are paid for and making it clear they have to know what is happening."
EXPERT VIEW: LABOUR PLEDGES COULD SIGNAL RENAISSANCE OF JOINED-UP CHILDREN'S POLICY
By Sir Paul Ennals, chair of Haringey local safeguarding children board
Tristram Hunt's proposal to support 50,000 extra childcare places, and to locate them within children's centres if Labour is elected, is welcome as far as it goes. But it doesn't go far.
Until now, Hunt has had very little to say about early years, or early intervention, or about anything much outside schools, and it has given the impression that the Labour leadership is not yet thinking creatively and ambitiously about children.
Sure Start is much more than just a potential base for childcare - although that is important. The best children's centres act as a focus for the services of all public and voluntary agencies that support families. Social workers, health visitors, Job Centre workers, family support posts in charities - these and many more see their local children's centre as their spiritual hub.
As council cuts have reduced their budgets, most centres have focused more upon families with the greatest needs, and we have seen some dilution of that vital sense of universality which was at the heart of the Sure Start vision. I always remember Naomi Eisenstadt (the first director of the previous Labour government's Sure Start Unit) saying "services for poor families end up as poor services" - and she was right.
If Labour wins this election, it will inherit a network of much-weakened children's centres across the country. Almost every local authority is bringing in more reductions to their Sure Start programmes from this April, and Hunt's proposal does little to stem that tide.
Nobody seriously expects promises of massive funding increases, but we can expect a vision of where these services might go. Council budgets are stripped to the bone, and Hunt's assumption that there is no cost to local authorities in hosting 50,000 more childcare places appears naive.
Not everything was right with children's centres in the past, and an updated vision has to assume smaller budgets than 10 years ago. Tomorrow's children's centres should be looking to support children and families right up the age range, not just pre-school. But now is a time for vision, for ambition and for dreams - not tinkering.
Perhaps the most important aspect of Yvette Cooper's announcement of the proposed new child protection unit is her conscious use of the mantra "Every Child Matters" in her justification. Could we be seeing the renaissance of the joined-up approach to children's policy that so many people have waited for?
She also consciously referenced the importance of "early intervention" as being part of the remit of the new unit. A welcome emphasis, for sure; but to make this a reality, it will need more than the engagement of the just Home Office and DfE. The Department of Health is a key player in the world of primary prevention, and we must hope it also will be invited to the party.
A genuinely cross-government approach to children - that must be a real encouragement to CYP Now readers.