Serco - government's Mr Fix-it. Everything from nuclear weapons, detention centres for illegal immigrants to Early Years Children's Centres - am I the one who finds this a bit scary?
As the Serco website quite openly states:
'Serco provides support services to the armed forces of a number of countries around the world, including the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany and Australia, working across land, sea, air, nuclear and space environments.'
'Since 2000, Serco has been entrusted with the management of the UK Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE), which provides the warheads for the UK’s independent nuclear deterrent.'
Is this kind of activity really appropriate for the body supporting the development of the government's Children's Centre programme? Is a multi-national company that is driveen by its shareholders to maximise profit really the best advocate for reducing child poverty? And, does this threaten one of the principles that was at the very heart of Sure Start local programmes, namely accountability to local parents?
Serco is the major partner in Together for Children, the public private partnership arrangement that is supporting the national development of Children's Centres and integrated services across England.
It appears to the Leveller that Serco is the company that the governemnt sends for when a project is in trouble, allowing the politocians to distance themselves from problems and shrouding the spending of public money behind third party business accounting. For example, Serco has recently taken over as 'strategic partner' of Stoke on Trent Children's Services Department after it was rated as the worst in england in 2006. One of Serco's bright ideas in Stoke has been to re-tender the childcare provision in the city's eight Children's Centres after they discovered that they were losing the council £1.2 million a year. The move has provoked an outcry from staff and parents alike and for the time the tendering of the nurseries being has been shelved.
A look at the Together for Children website (www.childrens-centres.org) paints a depressing picture, there is some useful stuff on there, but the stress is on delivery of Centres as quickly as possible, i.e delivering outputs (more centres) without a deal of regard for outcomes for the poorest children. Indeed whilst the Together for Children recent guidance on phase 3 Centres is highly prescriptive
'O
ther priorities for phase 3 centres are: supporting parents and providing access to evidence
based parenting programmes; working with fathers, teenage parents and children and families
from minority ethnic groups.
Planning for phase 3 centres should include consultation with potential users of a centre, with
advisory boards established at an early stage and definitely before designation.'
The Leveller believes that the use of the words 'should include consulation with potential users' is significant. Centres are no longer required to do this. I believe this can only be for two reasons. First, consulation will slow things down thereby preventing the achievement of the output and secondly, because the philosophy has changed - services Centres are now required to offer are increasingly proscribed and therefore the views of parents and children are of less value.
As a footnote on Serco...
'runs two immigration removal centres in the UK: Dungavel and Colnbrook; UK immigration centres have been condemned by Amnesty International in their 2005 report 'Seeking asylum is not a crime'. In 2004 one asylum seeker committed suicide in Dungavel and another attempted suicide at Colnbrook (to die later in hospital). A Freedom Of Information request to the Home Office disclosed that 'between 1 January 2004 and 10 April 2005, 150 children aged up to 17 years old were detained at Dungavel.' (Thanks to www.corporatewatch.org.uk)
Every Child Matters?