the swampy ground research project
a resource about partnership working for managers & educators in health & social care
Case Study - Sure Start: ‘Keeping the Essence’
Evolving into a Children's Centre
Sure Start is a national government programme set up in 1998 aiming to ‘deliver the best start in life for every child’ (Sure Start Web Site).It brings together, early education, childcare, health and family support. Beginning with targeted neighbourhood-based Sure Start programmes funded by the Department of Health, the scheme was extended in 2005/06 to cover the whole country, based on Children’s Centres funded through local authorities.
Local Sure Start programmes resulted from bids from partnerships which included voluntary and statutory organisations. They vary from one building with a range of facilities for parents and children to a ‘virtual’ centre using a range of buildings and services across a locality.
The mapping [see pdf ] shows:
a) relations at the start of the Sure Start project
b) how issues over capital funds for building work affected these
c) how the shift to a Children’s centre changed relationships
Stories in the Sure Start case
Hope was the Programme Director when this Sure Start programme was set up. In the course of this research, she moved to another job. She lives locally
People in this case:
Della, is a mother who has been involved on the Parents’ Forum and then the Executive, and her daughter Charisse
Rachel, is Chair of this Sure Start, also a local mother
Lydia, is the current Co-0rdinator, also a local mother
Mary, is the Head of the Nursery School, run by the borough Education Department
Read or download a PDF of all the stories in this case study. Also useful diagrams PPT or PDF
RESEARCHERS' Commentary
This case raises three important questions about partnership working:
1. What kind of relationship is this partnership?
What are the expectations? For example do partners have shared goals? What accountability do funded organisations have to Sure Start and Sure Start to them? Are the funds a grant or a payment for services? The partners seem to see the relationship very differently and make assumptions about what should be happening, for example in relation to the building.
2. When do you withdraw from a partner or partnership?
This partnership was strained at different times and one person even feels they should have pulled out. In the event the partnership continued and people made the best of what they had to work with.
3. Who are the service users?
Here it remains unclear whether users are parents or children or both. How does this affect the partnership? This affects how partners prioritise aspects of their activity: is their main focus in Sure Start about work, training and/or support for parents; or about community development; or is it about childcare or children’s development and empowerment? Of course the reality is that both parents and children are key users and the partnership needed to recognise this and its implications.
The case also emphasises the issues and disconnections in translating national policy – first Sure Start and subsequently Children’s Centres – into local implementation, especially where partnership working is required.
Moss Kanter’s concept of change (1992) shows the dynamics of multiple levels of change that people in this case are dealing with.(Moss Kanter diagram) This helps highlight some sources of the difficulties of translating policy into practice on the ground as a result of movement at national level, between parts of the local system and between individuals:
- Everything happened too fast: suddenly there were 20 extra children in the Nursery School;
- No one knew anything – uncertainty for all, both at the beginning of Surestart and in the shift to the Children’s centre – everyone comments on the latter:
- Contradictory directions of the change – more involvement and empowerment but strong quantitative measures and move to more centralised decisions on commissioning:
- Statutory sector was restructuring so couldn’t respond at the time and in the way the changes needed:
- Dislocation between levels – borough and government do not know what is happening on the ground:
- Individuals jockeying for power and control – the Head of the Community Association wants the Children’s Centre to be his project and so does the head of the Willow project. The Nursery School Head believes she should automatically be the head of the new Children’s Centre.
- Need for a centrally produced database for Sure Start to support local work:
Mapping the case study and its component organisations also shows the complexities of implementing locally a national policy and how links changed over time.
PDF version
PPT version
Key themes relating to partnership are also visible in the case:
The importance of territory is vivid. Buildings are symbolic spaces – people talk of ‘strongholds’, ‘boundaries’, ‘turf’, being ‘new kid on the block’; issues of permanence and transience loom large – from the mud walls ruined in the rain to the resistance to a temporary ‘modular’ community nursery
Face-to face working - it was important for people to meet together physically and to have the social process and immediacy of face to face work – for parents and staff. Linked to this are issues of conflict, and emotion especially where people were not face-to-face: involving lawyers, with people ‘being quite emotional’ and ‘getting more heated’; and issues of loyalty and trust in this adversarial context.
Cross professional practice – working together was seen as ‘virtual’ though they met face to face. Flexible and responsive was a way of working – to ‘keep to the essence’ while keeping responsiveness. Workers introduced mothers to other practitioners and practitioners’ feedback was valued. This process by which ‘two halves create a whole in a new virtual way’ is the opposite of the narrow professionalism demonstrated by the traditional ‘Officers-in-Charge’ of social services nursery centres.
Accountability - the Nursery School Head sees herself as having professional accountability; but national targets are seen as ‘bonkers’. Data is complex to collect: the aim is for consistency and comparison with different programmes but Rachel the Chair points out that projects are all at a different stage. She sums up her view of what is required as ‘responsibility without authority’. Organisational structure was also key to accountability. The PCT manages Hope the Programme Director & provides project management which is not accountable to Sure Start and can’t be controlled by them. The absence of the borough’s social services department is notable, probably a result of few resources for other than direct statutory duties. The Education department did not know anything about what was on the ground and variations between the borough’s 7 Sure Start projects, even though it was taking over this complex initiative.
User involvement - these stories show a range of parental involvement, from significant empowerment to marginalisation – for example through an absence of preventative work with families who have the most difficulties because of the lack of any Social Services involvement. There are different views on dependency vs support. Unlike many projects, parents participate in financial decisions (‘we say yea or nay’) . There is a ‘good mix’ of parents involved in decisions. Della’s story shows how she got gradually and increasingly involved, building her own and others’ confidence on the way. Issues of class [parent] and diversity [chair] are raised. There is a process of outreach to so-called hard to reach groups, both by professionals and parents. On the other hand there was silence about a philosophy of childcare – what assumptions were made about child development or empowerment; or for example about lesbians and gay men as staff or parents; or about the impact of ethnicity on childcare, children and families. There was an explicit mention of a Thai mother, a Black British mother and an Egyptian mother attending a meeting together with a mention of ‘any colour person’ by a parent. Much is unsaid or assumed in this case.
Leadership – contrasting styles are commented on and experienced here: Mary, the Nursery School Head is ‘in meetings all the time (‘how does she find time for the in-between things?’) while Hope the Programme Director ‘gets down and dirty’, is ‘fun-loving’. Hope aims at a personal approach and ‘blends in extremely well’.
Gender issues lurk within the stories: Sure Start is thought to be about children so it’s seen as ‘a bunch of women’ with an absence of dads. Few men are mentioned, and these are all in unclear, disembodied, absent roles: the Director of the Community Association is the ‘business brain’; the local authority Early Years person – ‘not sure what he did’. One dad was employed in the project; the male PCT project manager was seen as ineffective. Two dads were said to be involved, but one had ‘disappeared’. It is notable that such a silence exists in a family centred project.
Read or download a PDF of all the stories in this case study.
Also useful diagrams PPT or PDF
Moss Kanter's 3-levels of change PDF version PPT version