Tories plan for Sure Starts to run as co-operatives

Speaking at 4Children's annual conference in London, Mr Willetts, who has special responsibility for family policy, said that children's centres choosing this route would be funded by central government and would not be under local authority control.

Centre staff would be paid partly on 'outcomes' - for example, the level of infant mortality rates - and he said it would be easy for staff to use an 'off-the-shelf business model'.

Tory leader David Cameron has said Sure Start would be targeted at the most 'dysfunctional' and disadvantaged families and that staff would be paid partly by results (News, 21 January).

At the conference, 4Children launched the results of a survey published in an interim report by the Family Commission, the charity's 18-month inquiry, which aims to identify what help families need in the way of housing, financial support, childcare and eldercare and social services.

It found that only one quarter of adults think childcare services are 'family friendly'. Job centres were felt to be the least helpful service, with only 3 per cent of the 2,024 respondents saying they were family friendly. Schools were cited as family friendly by 45 per cent of the respondents.

When asked how they would change local services, 65 per cent said they wanted more evening and weekend opening hours, 51 per cent said accessing services needed to be less complicated and 43 per cent said they wanted more activities for children after school. Only 7 per cent felt that politicians understood the realities of family life.

The Commission's chair Esther Rantzen said, 'There are some heart-searching questions to be answered by politicians, and by professionals working with families. Why are politicians felt to be out of touch with the reality of family life? Why aren't services accessible at times when parents can use them, in a form parents can understand?'

The report's recommendations include implementing more initiatives to improve the availability of childcare outside traditional working hours and flexible ways of paying for childcare. It also recommends reforming the benefit system to ensure that families are always better-off in work, with more help for the long-term unemployed to sustain and progress in employment.

The final Family Commission report will be published in the autumn.

Further information www.thefamilycommission.org.uk