Minister answers MPs on Sure Start

The children's minister was speaking at the All Party Parliamentary Group on Sure Start to give her initial response to the group's interim report.

The ongoing inquiry aims to assess the impact of significant changes to the way that children's centre services are being delivered and reorganised in the wake of cuts to local authority budgets.

The guidance will be 'more about services than buildings' and will try to make the role of children's centres clearer, Ms Teather said.

This follows the new core purpose of children's centres, published last year, which the children's minister said makes clear that the prime purpose of centres is 'to narrow gaps' and focuses on outcomes.

She said that the aim was to publish more transparency data linked with outcomes.

'What I want to know is, are they (centres) spending money on making a difference,' she said.

Ms Teather said that following the trial of payment by results in 27 areas, the Government would soon make it clear what outcomes children's centres would be expected to deliver.

Introducing the minister, chair of the group, Liberal Democrat Annette Brooke, said that previous sessions of the inquiry had led her to wonder 'what a children's centre was any more' and that the group was looking to Government for guidance.

Ms Teather, who said she would also give a formal written response to the APPG's report, reiterated the Government's commitment to children's centres and said that early intervention was seen as of 'paramount importance', as it made good financial sense and was at the heart of arguments made by MPs Graham Allen and Frank Field.

She said the key feature of centres was that they had 'a universal front door' but also needed to have much better outreach and evidence-based interventions, better targeting and better integration of services, with more focus on outcomes.

Ms Teather said that the Government wanted to see much more involvement of the voluntary sector and of parents. She added, 'We will be saying more about parental involvement in the next few weeks.'

She also said that while she understood there were strong feelings about the removal of the ringfence for Sure Start funding, she was committed to localism and that 'local authorities were much more likely to make the right decisions based on local need' and that this gave them enough flexibility.

It was in 'local authorities' interests to protect the most vulnerable', she said, and the Children's Improvement Board and SERCO would be helping support local authorities with best practice and to meet their sufficiency duties.

Most local authorities, she said, were 'restructuring in a careful way'. She gave the example of the London borough of Greenwich, which has adopted federations with 17 lead centres and 11 managers.

She said that 'merging back office functions' of children's centres was the 'type of reorganisation that continues to supply best practice on the ground for families.'

The All Party Parliamentary Group also heard reports from voluntary sector children's centre providers the Children's Society, 4Children and Action for Children.

Asked by shadow children's minister Sharon Hodgson whether payment by results could lead to funding problems for some centres, for example those in very deprived areas, Anne Longfield, chief executive of 4Children, said that it would depend how it was administered.

'If it's a very small amount and paid to incentivise improvement it could work, but if it's the whole payment it's not going to be feasible, without major funding,' she said.