The key to the swift designation and opening of children's centres is the use of a finely-tuned project management team and the development of services before the completion of capital projects, according to the local authorities who have unveiled the most centres in the past year.
Minister for children, young people and families Beverley Hughes revealed that 500 children's centres have been designated or opened in the past 12 months. She also announced last week that the families of one million children can now access services at 1,250 centres.
Durham County Council, with 22 new centres, has developed the most in the past year, followed by Birmingham with 16, Derbyshire with 13 and Oxfordshire with 12 (see table).
While emphasising that Durham's achievement was down to 'hard work and a committed team effort', strategic officer for Sure Start Frank Firth said the appointment of a capital projects manager at the outset of the programme had proved crucial.
He said, 'The manager was critical because she worked very closely with our policy and planning team, looking at school sites where we knew we had
surplus accommodation. They would negotiate with heads and governors about space in schools that could be given up. '
For Bob Janes, cabinet member for education at Derbyshire County Council, the progress made so far has been attributable to 'a strong corporate and political commitment' within the authority. He said that the appointment of district managers, some of them managers of former Sure Start local programmes, would be key to delivering further phases of the children's centres programme when more limited amounts of capital could present a challenge.
Clare Abolins, children's centre programme manager for South Oxfordshire, said the authority had the advantage of 'not starting from scratch' as the county already had 'a lot of family centres providing a good range of children's centre services'.
She added, 'You can start delivering services before you have got the capital in place, and there is so much groundwork that needs to be done. You can find venues, get people together, talk about the services people want and get development plans done. Early on, we got service level agreements in place specifying what we wanted centres to deliver, got job descriptions agreed and started recruiting.'
Liz Taylor, Sure Start strategic development manager at Southampton, said that a similar approach helped the city develop nine centres in the past year. She added, 'Having agreed the children's centre boundaries for the city, we then developed outreach services before we completed the actual buildings.'
Top 10 authorities
Children's centres designated or opened over the past year
- Durham: 22
- Birmingham: 16
- Derbyshire: 13
- Oxfordshire: 12
- Kirklees: 11
- Bradford: 10
- Kent: 9
- Luton: 9
- Northumberland: 9
- Southampton: 9
