It had a ground-breaking mission to create 45,000 full-time daycare places in disadvantaged areas, particularly those with little or no existing provision. Yet many private providers involved in the trail-blazing Neighbourhood Nurseries Initiative (NNI) now fear for their long-term viability. They are concerned at the potential threat from other Government initiatives and feel that some local authorities are keeping them in the dark over plans for children's centres.
Mary Pooley, assistant director of the Sure Start Unit, promised at a recent conference on the role of the private sector that 'all neighbourhood nurseries should become or be linked to children's centres'. According to the DfES, 677 of the 1,390 neighbourhood nurseries are involved in children's centres, including 157 of the 564 which are private sector-led.
With 18 neighbourhood nurseries spread across the country, Neil Taylor, director of the Merseyside-based Wind in the Willows chain, agrees that they 'should be linked in with children's centres'. But recent experience tells him that many of them won't be.
He says, 'People in the private sector are scratching their heads because it seems the Government wants to parachute children's centres into areas to do much the same as the neighbourhood nurseries are already doing. Local authorities should be looking very carefully at where they are placing the children's centres and link in with childcare in their area.'
To obtain three years of NNI funding, providers had to submit five-year business plans to their local authority to demonstrate that they could make the nursery viable. But Mr Taylor points out that when he drafted his plans, he did not envisage children's centres being situated close by. Nor did he foresee that local Sure Start programmes would lure away his trained staff with the promise of much higher salaries and tempt parents with offers of daycare discounted to just 70 a week.
Expert advice
Rosemary Murphy, chief executive of the National Day Nurseries Association, suggests that civil servants themselves should have a business plan, and 'then they might question their own decisions to set up childcare businesses without bringing in the experts from among 10,000 private day nurseries'.
She accepts that at ministerial level there is 'an absolute will that everyone is involved', but adds, 'The difficulty is how that pans out at local authority level. Some local authorities, now that they are getting hold of the purse strings attached to the nursery education grant and children's centres, are quite reluctant to let that go to what they see as a profit-making sector.'
Some councils, however, are making strenuous efforts to reassure the private sector. Lynn Hoare, who runs the Poet's Corner nursery in Hove, East Sussex, feared for the viability of her nursery, set up in 2002 with some NNI money. But Brighton and Hove EYDCP has allayed her fears about the market being 'flooded with empty nursery places'.
Ms Hoare says, 'Sure Start have put two huge neighbourhood nurseries in two areas of deprivation. The EYDCP realised where the Government money should be going and did not dump it all over the town. They have seen that there is enough provision around and have acted sensibly. It comes as an enormous relief.'
Mary Pooley told the conference, 'Childcare partners? The changing role of the private sector in delivering the national childcare strategy', that local authorities with a good record on consulting with the private sector would advise areas where dialogue and partnership working were not working.
Establishing links
In Nottinghamshire the link between the county's 15 new neighbourhood nurseries and the development of the children's centre programme is epitomised by the role of Diane Tinklin. She was the neighbourhood nurseries co-ordinator and has switched to become the children's centre support officer.
She explains, 'Neighbourhood nurseries and other private providers have been heartened to hear that we do sympathise with their problems and are trying to fill gaps instead of creating new provision which might duplicate and damage existing nurseries.'
The authority recently invited all the neighbourhood nursery providers to a meeting 'to put them in the picture' and agreed that one of them should represent their interests on the children's centre steering group. Ms Tinklin also maintains a dialogue via the Pre-school Learning Alliance, a provider, and the National Day Nurseries Association at local level.
She hopes that some neighbourhood nurseries will ultimately provide the daycare in children's centres. She cites the example of a school linking up with an NNI nursery by supplying it with a teacher funded by the local authority. Similar efforts to integrate NNI nurseries with local schools and children's centres are being undertaken by the Halifax-based Children's Place nursery chain (see box).
One-stop shops
With around 32 per cent of all NNI nurseries on school sites supplying 18,500 places, the potential for close partnership and a smooth transition to the development of children's centres would seem clear.
However, Rosemary Murphy believes that comments earlier this year by children's minister Margaret Hodge that she wanted early education and childcare delivered on the same site have encouraged some local authorities to bypass NNI nurseries.
Where nursery education for three- and four-year-olds is being delivered by the local school, some NNI nurseries are finding that it is no longer acceptable for them to be released into their care after the sessions are completed.
A DfES spokesman says that quality one-stop service benefits young children, offers logistical benefits for families and strengthens parenting skills. He adds that schools are being encouraged to 'not necessarily provide these services themselves, but in many instances deliver them in partnership with the private and voluntary sectors'.
However, it is clear that some local authorities, invested with increased strategic and financial control, are opting to use the maintained sector.
The sense that NNI providers are being ignored in the development of children's centres can only add to their concerns that their long-term sustainability is in doubt.
Neil Leitch, director of communications at the Pre-school Learning Alliance, which is creating 30 NNI nurseries, says, 'It's slightly worrying that, having put all the capital investment in, it could all go by the wayside, or that a firefighting approach could come into play when the initial funding runs out.'
The margin between viability and extinction is particularly narrow for NNI nurseries because, being situated in areas of disadvantage, they are limited by the extent to which they can raise fees.
For Neil Taylor the message to the DfES is clear: 'We have opened all the nurseries over a short period, we have done what the Government asked us to do. We have put ourselves on the line financially and we want the Government to acknowledge that and give us the support and help we need.'
INTEGRATED EFFORTS
Children's Place Nursery in Bradford
The Children's Place neighbourhood nursery is located in a Sure Start building on the site of Byrons Primary school and is well-placed if a planned children's centre there gets the go-ahead.
Debbie Burke, joint owner of the Halifax-based nursery chain, says that an advisory group was set up before the nursery's recent opening to cement its links with the school and Sure Start.
The first meeting of the advisory group was attended by the Sure Start childcare co-ordinator, health visitors and representatives from the extended schools initiative, who pledged to help market the nursery. The school is also expected to be represented on the group, to ensure that the nursery's work around the Foundation Stage links with that of the school.
Ms Burke says, 'It's about respecting everyone's views, changing mindsets and making sure that partnership really works.'
Gooseberry Bush day nursery in Camborne, Cornwall
With health visitors, speech therapists, a breakfast and out-of-school club and childminders using it as a meeting place, the Gooseberry Bush nursery in Camborne, Cornwall has all the trappings to become a children's centre.
But while owner Gill Smith says she would 'love to become a children's centre', she could not do so without more capital funding to expand her premises.
Since the purpose-built 73-place nursery, with 23 NNI places, is situated on the site of the Rosemellin primary school, she has been refused more help and told to use the school. But she insists this is not viable, since teachers often work after hours in their classrooms and there would not be enough space for all the nursery's activities.
That taking a child for two-a- half-hour session of nursery education also blocks a full-time place and penalises the setting financially. She says, 'I hate to speak about children as income, but we have to be sustainable.
The Government should fund for a full morning at least.'
