Work matters: Management Focus: Children's Centres - Piloting new services

A programme which is supporting children's centre leaders to work at a more strategic level and improve local services is now beginning to bear fruit.

The National College for School Leadership (NCSL) Early Years Integrated System Leadership programme has been running since February. Its 12 participating children's centre heads are now beginning to provide evidence about how they can effect change.

As part of the programme, participants have looked at opportunities and challenges around integrated system leadership, building relationships and becoming agents for change. They have also carried out research into an aspect of leadership that can be innovative, including themes such as creating learning environments for children and families, engaging with children with disabilities, and collaborative neighbourhood work to improve community cohesion.

Sharon Bell, who is manager of Broadwater Children's Centre in Stevenage, reports that the pilot is already helping her to create more joined-up services for children and families in her local area. Her centre has been developing its one-to-one work with parents, helping them to gain the skills they need to get back into employment. For her research project she has been investigating ways to look at how this information can be used in the longer term.

'We offer a lot of courses for parents and by the time their children reach five, we have a portfolio of information about where parents are up to in their development and what else they might be interested in pursuing,' she says. 'But currently there is no process in place to hand this information over to the extended schools service, so essentially, the work gets lost.

'To ensure that this is now passed on, we have created a database that enables us to sign parents up when their child is born or even when they are expecting, and continue to tailor services to their needs, through to when their child is 19.'

Ms Bell has also been working closely with the other seven children's centres in Stevenage, as well as the extended schools service.

'The pilot has also got me looking at other ways the centres can be more joined up,' she says. 'There tends to be a lot of re-inventing the wheel going on, with different centres working on similar issues, so I've been investigating joint projects. I've also been looking at how we can improve children's experience of transition from the nursery and pre-school stage to school by better sharing of information.'

The project will be completed in March 2010.

Further information: www.nationalcollege.org.uk