Improving Children's Services

From Sure Start to Children's Centres

Speakers: Professor Angela Anning and Mog Ball

Centre for Research into Childhood (CRinCh)

This was a very seminar that I attended yesterday. The two speakers where launching their new book

Improving Services for Young Children: From Sure Start to Children's Centres

The seminar was very enlightening and certainly for me, a novice in this field, helped to fill out many of the blanks in my knowledge especially regarding the socio-political background underpinning the radical policy shift and investment into early years during the past 10 years. The two speakers have both played important roles in reviewing the effectiveness of Sure Start. Both were in the lead steering body and each commissioned elements of the National Evaluation of Sure Start, one of the most expensive and largest social science reviews undertaken in the UK by the government.

So what did I take away from the seminar? Well I now have a much better understanding of the policy decisions leading up to the £500 million investment by the government in 1997. I had not fully realising how far the UK had fallen behind other leading industrial countries at the time in the provision and support for very young children and their parents or to quote Mog Ball "the government saw it as a private matter as to what happened between children and parents in the 80s and 90s." Consequently this had lead to great swaths of inequality and poverty throughout the country with essentially little support for those parents and families most in need leading to a cycle of poverty, ill health and unemployment. Regardless of one’s political colours you cannot help marvel at the socio-cultural shift that has happened in the past 10 years since New Labour fresh from their general election campaign raise the this area as a major focus for investment and policy. Only this week we have Labour and the Conservatives during their part conference in Birmingham trying to outdo each her with family policies!

The Gender Divide

A predominant issues that needs careful reflection is the reality that although my research deals with parents the reality of my work to date means that it is mothers who form my sample. It is interesting to note that even today, women seem to be, by far the primary care givers for children. An example of this is with the Bingo 'n' Butties group that I attend on Wednesday mornings, not one man attends the session bar me. This also goes to all of the support staff. Across the service and outreach workers that I have met not one of them is male. Does this matter? Certainly there has been a lot written in but the subject with Sure Start guidance suggesting that there should be "a male Father's outreach post" although I have yet to come across one.

This question can be asked on two levels: a) how it relates to me as a researcher and b) sociologically. Dealing with the first point how does it affect my research? Certainly many feminist researcher talk about women interviewing women.

Dealing with the sociological question -- this is something I don't have any ready answer to. In an attempt to find out a little more I am reading Diane Reay's Class Work : Mother's Involvement in their Children's Primary Schooling. Perhaps it should be no real surprised that mothers take the predominate role in dealing with children, yet my thoughts were that in our current world men would take a bigger role. Then again reflect against the growing feminisation of say education, especially primary schools, or the near total feminisation of any kind of early years provision should we be surprised where men are absent from child care?