Sure Start
[4] The initiative originated from HM Treasury,[5] with the aim of "giving children the best possible start in life" through improvement of childcare, early education, health and family support, with an emphasis on outreach and community development.
The initiatives were subsequently bound together to form Sure Start Children's Centres, and responsibility for them was transferred to local government.
Initial research findings from NESS, published in 2005, suggested the impact of (the then termed) Sure Start Local Programmes (SSLPs) was not as great as had been hoped.
[15] Initial funding was substantial, with £540m allocated for expenditure between 1999 and 2002, £452m of it within England, to set up 250 Sure Start Local Programmes (SSLPs) reaching up to 150,000 children in areas of deprivation.
In the 2004 Comprehensive Spending Review, Chancellor Gordon Brown announced that the Government would provide funding for 2,500 Children's Centres by 2008.
In 2005, Norman Glass, one of the original architects of Sure Start wrote an article praising the increased government focus on the early years, but criticising cuts in funding per head; the change from child development to childcare and getting mothers into work; and the shift back to local authority control, rather than being run by boards including parents.
In February 2017, all 44 Sure Start children's centres in Oxfordshire were closed after High Court appeals against the measure failed.
Although early evaluations did not find Sure Start Local Programmes (SSLPs) to have been particularly effective, by 2008 NESS was able to conclude "For the time being, it remains plausible, even if by no means certain, that the differences in findings across the first and second phases of the NESS Impact Study reflect actual changes in the impact of SSLPs resulting from the increasing quality of service provision, greater attention to the hard-to-reach and the move to Children's Centres, as well as the greater exposure to the programme of children and families in the latest phase of the impact evaluation.
This study, different in design to NESS, ran for 6 years and by 2015 had, "identified a number of significant but relatively small positive effects in promoting better outcomes for each user group considered (child, mother, and families)"[42] although no impact was found on household employment status (whether or not one or adults in a household works) or on children's health.
[43] In 2017 the evidence concerning the effectiveness of Sure Start from both the NESS and the ECCE studies was summarised by a briefing paper that was written for members of Parliament.
The value-for-money analysis concluded that most services provided a net financial loss to Government, but that the overall benefits (to both individuals and the Government) were seen to provide overall value for money: "This report has shown that policies which have impacts within reasonable bounds of magnitudes on early child and family outcomes can potentially generate substantial monetary returns over and above the costs of delivering the services.
The study found that where Sure Start offered high levels of service in poor neighbourhoods in England, visits to hospital to treat injuries fell among all children of primary school age, and by a third of all 11-year-olds.
"[45] In April 2024, an Institute for Fiscal Studies report on the educational impacts of the Sure Start programme found that "children who lived within a short distance (2.5 kilometres) of a Sure Start centre for their first five years performed 0.8 grades better in their GCSEs", with "larger impacts for those from the poorest backgrounds and those from non-white backgrounds".
It further found "that for every £1 the government spent on Sure Start, there were benefits to attending children worth £1.09" in higher lifetime earnings as a result of these educational outcomes.
