The Commons Education and Skills Select Committee said, 'We are doubtful that a policy as ambitious as Every Child Matters can be funded in the main from existing budgets.' It called for 'additional dedicated resources, cross-departmentally and ring-fenced if appropriate' to enable its successful implementation.
The committee's chairman, Huddersfield MP Barry Sheerman, told Nursery World, 'We have consistently said that we don't think this can be done without serious new money. After the election, all of us who are interested in this issue have got to lobby for more money.'
However, although the committee had been critical of aspects of Government policy, he felt that the overall tone of its report had been 'positive and constructive' and he believed that was how children's minister Margaret Hodge regarded it.
The committee acknowledged the Government's arguments that early intervention would result in fewer financial burdens on the welfare state later on, but it warned that the costs of transition to fully integrated service delivery had been 'vastly underestimated'.
Anne Longfield, chief executive of the charity 4Children, said the report was correct in noting that local authorities were experiencing 'the tension between ensuring their statutory responsibilities are met and investing in new preventative services'.
She said there needed to be additional funding to provide a bridge between the concept of integrated working and its implementation in practice.
'You have local authorities, providers and children's trusts who are talking the language of integration, and they want to do it, but if there is not additional investment there will be a dilution of the end product,'
she said.
While the committee largely endorsed the Government's strategy for integration, it said extended schools should not be regarded as 'a panacea to address a plethora of issues' and warned that many young people would be wary of services provided in schools.
The mainstreaming of Sure Start services and the channelling of funds through local authorities could lead to parents and carers being marginalised when it came to the design and delivery of services, the report suggested. The committee said, 'We are concerned that significant changes are being made to the Sure Start programme when evidence about the effectiveness of the current system is only just beginning to emerge.'
The MPs also said that the decision to create IT-based child indexes to share information appeared to have been taken before the results of a series of pilots had been assessed. They said, 'We have significant reservations about whether this will represent the best use of resources and very significant concerns about critical issues such as security, confidentiality and access arrangements.'
The role of the new Children's Commissioner for England should be reshaped, the committee said, so that it focused on promoting and protecting children's rights in accordance with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child rather than simply promoting children's views.
* See 'To the point', page 9
