At the weekend David Cameron made speech undermining Sure Start, promising to cut Outreach Workers from Children's Centres and replacing them with more Health Visitors.
As far as I can see this is simply another attempt by Cameron to portray the Labour Government as profiligate and wasteful with resources. In addition he may be trying to reach out to overstretched NHS workers by saying that he values their tried and trusted professionalism over new-fangled approaches.
Whilst I have absolutely no problem with Health Visitors whatsoever, Cameron's proposal is actually a backward step. In reality his proposed increase will only get the current Health Visitor workforce up to strength, and lets face it if they had done such a good job histotically we wouldn't have needed SureStart in the first place. Whilst it is changing many Health Visitors are still charged with visiting every mother with a new born rather then targeting those most in need.
Cameron dare not say that he will get rid of Sure Start as he's making every effort to portray himself as family guy in charge of a family friendly Tory party. However, he doesn't really believe of the aims of the policy: to target the poorest and most vulnerable children. Face it the Tories have never been sympathetic to single parents or the children of immigrants for example. Read the Daily Mail if you are in any doubt.
When Cameron goes on the TV and says he likes SureStart 'my children have used it' he just confirms that hes missed the point - its not meant to be for the children of millionaires.
What could be really damaging is that Cameron's comments could set professionals working in early years against each other, undoing many years of effort to develop integrated services. It could also undermine some parent's confidence in Surestart services which won't help anybody.
The latest NESS report shows that SureStart is at last beginning to have a real impact. Those of us there at the beginning will remember that we all said that SureStart would take a generation to make a real change.
Keep the faith, stuff Cameron, what does he know?