Sign In
Sign In
Register for Free

‘The shift away from universal services is concerning’

The shift in balance towards targeted services at our children’s centres must be resisted or vulnerable families may slip through the net, says Claire Matthes…

Claire Matthes
by Claire Matthes
Paddington Bear whole school resource pack
DOWNLOAD A FREE RESOURCE! Paddington Bear – Whole-school lesson plans & activity sheets
PrimaryEnglish

The 4Children Children’s Centre Census published in October last year [PDF], highlighted the ongoing uncertainty children’s centres are experiencing in the face of cuts.

In all, 64% of centre managers canvassed said their budget had been cut and, partly as a response to that, 77% said that services had become more targeted in the last year. The shift in the balance towards more targeted services (focused on the most vulnerable users) and away from universal services (open to everyone) is concerning, not least because of the fact that families can quickly move from accessing universal services to needing more targeted support.

Whilst this shift would seem to concur with the DfE’s published guidelines that “The core purpose of Sure Start children’s centres is to improve outcomes for young children and their families, with a particular focus on those in greatest need” (DfE, 2014), the value of retaining a universal service should be defended by children’s centre teams and their managers.

Identifying the benefits

My own experience as a member of children’s centre staff delivering a universal service – a weekly Play and Learn session – highlights this. Over the six years that we have run Play and Learn, many of the parents who have come to the session and revealed that they were in some kind of crisis would not have been picked up under any of our targeted headings had they not attended.

We might have come to know of them some time down the line had they been referred by social services or health services; however, being able to intervene early could well have prevented an escalation in crisis and cost. At ground level, and anecdotally, I know why I so highly value our universal Play and Learn. When I hear of a new initiative or service I cannot help but immediately think ‘Who might that help?’, and begin to make a mental list of individual families to promote it to.

My informal, unofficial targeting might be based upon the fact that I know they are, for example, a work-less household. However, it is more likely to be founded upon what I have come to know about that family, their needs and their aspirations – and for the most part this knowledge has been gained through a lengthy relationship probably originated from contact at a universal service, such as our weekly Play and Learn.

Active identification

At Play and Learn, through a combination of talking to parents and observing children, we have identified several families eligible for FEET, provided food bank vouchers, and referred to other specialist services such as Portage, health visitors and speech and language therapy. We have shared information about our targeted services, such as offering a mother with suspected postnatal depression a priority place on Baby Massage, and publicised parenting courses to parents who appear to be struggling with their child’s behaviour.

All of these things and more have happened during this universal session – so in my experience, to cut such a service would be to miss out on the opportunity to identify families for more targeted services before the crisis happens or has got a grip. I do realise that it is easy for me to say such things. I do not have control of the purse strings, nor am I charged with the burden and responsibility of having to plan services within a tight and increasingly stretched budget. Cuts are a fact of life across all public services, and they have to be made – but I would encourage children’s centre teams to work hard to protect the universal segment of their service and reflect upon how it has a direct effect on providing targeted services in a timely and therefore cost-effective manner. National initiatives to attract and introduce all families with young children to children’s centres by, for example, making children’s centres a venue for officially registering new births, have been slow to get off the ground. Certainly, increasing universal footfall through children’s centres would, by default, increase the numbers of targeted families identified and offered appropriate support.

However, we cannot wait for local or national policy changes to occur. We must therefore act now to increase registrations through our universal services; to not just provide a quality service to as many local families as possible, but to identify families in crisis or need as early as possible, preventing more complex and costly problems further on.

Promoting universal services

Maybe one of the keys to protecting a universal service such as our Play and Learn is to have the data to prove its worth, beyond the visible creative EYFS play opportunities it provides. High attendance figures alone are not fully illustrative. Rather than look solely at the data then, explore the stories behind the data. This can only be done with input from all staff, and preferably not by managers in isolation. Data is only part of the story. If things still come down to data – as is so often the case – then the trick might be to increase the number of families at each universal event. Health visitors and other agencies are generally good at referring in families for parenting courses, home visiting and other targeted interventions, but more could be done to promote our universal events throughout the community – including via primary schools, where pupils often have preschool-age siblings.

A town such as the one in which I live and work is flooded with music and movement classes and toddler groups, but few, if any, provide a free or heavily subsidised gateway to a broad array of information, community contacts and services that our universal events and services provide, designed as they are to support parents with young children every step of the way up to school.

This unique capacity should be preserved, then, as the welcoming doorway to a wealth of advice and services that can support every parent with children under school age, and in particular those families in greatest need – many of whom, at first point of contact with the children’s centre, will not appear to be a family in need of targeted support, but through changes in circumstances become so.

Take Action

• Call a special staff meeting. Invite all staff to bring along case stories that illustrate the benefits of a universal service, particularly with regard to it being a gateway to identifying targeted families for early intervention.

• Select a recent month of a particular universal event, such as Stay and Play. As a team, look at how many universal families and targeted attended; how many universal families received a targeted action (tailored advice, a shoulder to cry on, enrolment on a course, referral or signposting to specialist services, etc.); and how universal families in that time became targeted (through job loss, relationship breakdown, etc.).

• Discuss ways of increasing the numbers of families attending universal services. This might simply be a case of looking at promotion strategies and existing links, before widening the net so that more professionals, schools and community organisations are talking to parents about their local children’s centre.

Claire Matthes is a Froebel-trained EYT who works in a Surrey Sure Start children’s centre.

You might also be interested in...