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!

Meadowfield Parents Group

Today I attended the first session after the school holidays at the Meadowfield's Bacon 'n' Bingo Parents Session. I feel that I am beginning to be accepted by some of those present and almost becoming part of the fixtures. I started a tentative conversation with some of the mothers today about local schools these conversations seemed to flow freely and easily enough. My aim for next week is to further cultivate these conversations with a view to being able to approach the ladies for an interview.

After the session I was speaking with the support workers about the difficulty accessing hard to reach parents--those people whose voices remain unheard and who miss out and much of the community work. One of the workers said that very often "it is those parents who shout the loudest" who get all the help and support with those in real need being missed out. She explained that the only way to get in contact within some people was to go 'cold door knocking' and that they were always on the lookout for volunteers. I said that I could happily commit for six months. Let’s see where this goes. It may be an opportunity to meet with those people outside of the connected social groups.

Lower Income Groups (Reflections)

Yesterday, I spent the day at a primary school in one of the most deprived areas of Leeds.  During the day I spoke with and interviewed a number of mothers.   As I reflect after the event, a number of points seem to be highlighted in my mind.

• There seems to be an attitude of self sufficiency with a group of mothers.  They state that their problems are their own, and that they have to get on with it.  And yet, when things go wrong they blame the authorities who they were dealing with at the time for not helping enough.  When probed, they themselves did not or do not seek help from other sources.
• So far, only one father has been interviewed.  Does this reflect on the information seeking process as a whole i.e. it is the  mother who generally seems to take the lead?   It is true that in many cases not all of the parents are together.
• In the school that I was at yesterday I was surprised by the amount of Internet use by parents; maybe it was just who I spoke to yesterday, but it seemed as if the parents in this lower socio group really used the web more than 'middle class'  mothers.  Determining how successfully they used it is indeterminate at this stage.  (Was this as a result of the courses offered through the school for parents which included ECDL, CLAIT, and computer use??)

Certainly, I might be worth using this school and other similar ones as case study examination as part of my research.

Observations"

Today I attended, for the second time, the Whybeck Parents Forum.  My initial aim was to been seen, so that the parents would get to know me and hopefully agree to be interviewed.  

The forum is lively and energetic, with parents given an opportunity to have a say in the 'running' of the school.   The forum, is more than this however, it provides a social setting for the mothers (predominately women who attend).     It struck me today, as I attended (sometimes I can be a little dense) that what I was in fact doing was an observation in an ethnographic sense.  My aim now is to continue to attend and see how the group develop--there is rich source material in this parents forum.  

This reminds me of the remarks made by Charmaz (2006) who discusses the need for 'rich data' commenting that a "researcher can rarely make persuasive, much less definitive, statements from limited data" (p. 18) -- she also quotes Dey (1999: p. 119) who refers to a "smash and grab data collection strategy."

Parenting

I have been looking at modern parenting on and off for the past few weeks. This started when my director of studies (DOS) asked me to examine the sociology of parenting in Britain. It has been a fascinating paper, charting the sociological and physical changes to families in the past 30 years. What has proved particularly fruitful for me is realising just how much attention the British government has given to families and parenting through its Every Child Matters initiative and the Children’s Plan. This government’s prioritisation and emphasis has really provided my work with an additional and ‘unintended’ foundation, relevance—even legitimacy.

Here are some useful links:

Byron Review of Technology

Children's Plan

Department of Children Schools and Families

Every Child Matters

Misinformation on the Internet: Applying Evaluation Skills to Online Information

Fitzgerald, M. A. (1997). "Misinformation on the Internet: Applying Evaluation Skills to Online Information." Emergency Librarian 24(3): 9-14.

This is a very readable and accessible article which deals with the practical issues of critically using the internet. The paper is essentially divided into two sections. Section 1, provides a comprehensive (for an article) set of reasons why the internet contains misinformation. Section 2, develops practical methods for assessing web based information.

information needs of parents

In 1997 Marden and Nicholas noted that “in the rush to investigate the needs of people at work or study, the information needs of consumers or the general public have been wholly neglected by information researchers.” This statement is certainly still very true for the literature surrounding Information Literacy. Interestingly, Marden and Nicholas were researching the information needs of Parents, I have yet to get hold of their full report, however, this is a priority!