Each week on a Tuesday we have a baby sensory group at the Leveller Children's Centre. Its popular and at least twelve parents regularly attend alongside their babies.
It's a stirring experience watching the group of babies crawling around in almost darkness exploring the lights, sounds and fabrics whilst normally stressed out mothers visibly relax, on occaision some have fallen asleep for the hour.
This is an undeniably great SureStart experience epitomising all that is good about the programme. It's new, stimulating, led by a fantastic practitioner who has grown wings as a result of the freedom that working in Centre has given her. Best of all it is designed to reach out and strengthen bonds between mothers and babies in a disadvantaged area.
So why am I frustrated? Simply because every Monday at least two of the mothers drive up to the Centre in a new BMW or Range Rover. Thankfully these parents are in the minority and we work hard to market our Children's Centre and nursery services at those that need them most.
To me this exemplifies one the persistent issues faced by the Children's Centre programme, and wider the early years strategy. How to ensure that our services are effective in reaching those families that need them most.
Research into the impact of the Ten-Year Childcare Strategy published by the DCSF earlier this month seems to suggest that despite its continued expansion early education and childcare take up by parents is at best static and at worst slightly decreasing. Even the easy to access free nursery sessions for all three and four year olds is not fully taken up. According to figures in the report roughly 5% percentage of children have not accessed free early education in the last two years. In addition the take up is lowest amongst ethnic minority,low-income and lone parents: in other words those families that the policy is primarily intended to reach are the lowes users.
In the round whilst 95% of three and four year olds accessing provision is an excellent achievement by the government it is a concern that the remaining 5% that do not may include a sizeable number of children that really need the additional support. Of course there are always refuseniks, home educators and so on: those for whom the terms 'childcare' or 'early education' result in hives. Good luck to them as long as they don't smother their children. However, parents such as these are very much a curiousity and a real rarity.
Much more common of course are parents that are really grateful for the free entitlement whether its used in maintained, private or voluntary sector. So where are these missing children. Could it be these are still the 'hard to reach', unable or unwilling to get their children to nursery? If these are indeed the missing children it seems likely that unless we can work more effectively together to identify and entice the most deprived children into early education that the whole policy will be deemed a failure.
Might it be an idae for an element of Nursery Education Grant to be allocated on the basis of how inclusive settings are and how hard they try to reach lone parents, workless households, teenage parents etc.