The two big issues that will determine the sucess of the government's Children's Centre programme are accessible, quality and affordable childcare and the effectiveness of Children's Centre Family Support Workers. Both of these strands of activity are critical, particularly in demonstrating their effectiveness in supporting the most vulnerable or hard to reach families and children.
Outreach and Family Support work seems to be becoming the hot issue for Children's Centres this year. Clearly it's absolutely vital that Family Support Work should be safe, directed at those families that need it most, designed to meet the needs of families, effective and value for money. But is it yet?
What research there is into effective family support work seems to indicate that focussed, structured interventions have the greatest impact. One of the miost encouraging examples currently is the pilot health-led parenting programme that has been operating in a number of pilot areas in the last couple of years. Very simplistically this programme identifies vulnerable teenage parents when they 'book' (confirm their pregnancy) and partner them with either a midwife or health visitor who consistently visits every week for the next two years.
With its emphasis on professional input and its intensity this approach is going to be expensive on the face of it, but if it is effective its surely worth it. However, is it practical to offer models like this across the Children's Centre network? There are Children's Centres across the country are struggling with defining what their family support offer should be. Faced with limited resources centres often have workers doubling up: running groups or even working in daycare if the ratios are stretched.
In my experience this kind of targetted, structured and outcome driven approach rarely exists at the moment in Children's Centres. There is a great deal of anxiety about what work Family Support Workers are actually doing on the ground. These are in effect an emerging professional group, but without a given set of professional standards. What really concerns me is that, as a result, some Family Support Workers might be doing more harm than good.
There is an urgent need to examine the skills, knowledge, training and supervision of the Family Support workers that are out there now and that will be recruited in the future. At my centre we have moved away from workers with early education or childcare background and have targetted recruitment at workers from practical health or counselling backgrounds. I believe that workers with these backgrounds are, to put it bluntly, safer and less likely to do harm. They also bring evidence-based knowledge of issues such as breastfeeding, smoking cessation and emotional and mental health. This means that they can work alongside other professionals such as midwives and health visitors, offering a more informal type of support to parents, but with less risk that parents will receive contradictory advice.
Children's Centre Managers, Local authorities and the CWDC need to stpe up to the plate urgently here. Children's Centre Managers - forget rivalry and trying to make your centre different / bettr that the one up the road and learn from one another. Local authorities as the strategic lead for Children's Centres are ideally placed to examine the practice of Children's Centres in their locality and to commission training and advice on best practice. I know that the CWDC is looking at this, I hope they get it right and that they have the means to set some national standards and recommendations for good practice.