Other policy
Research: Empowering parents in Sure Start local programmes
1 Nov 2006
Executive Summary
Sure Start Local Programmes (SSLPs) formed a central part of the Government’s anti-poverty agenda, seeking to integrate and expand health, childcare, early education and family support services to families with young children living in economically deprived areas. Through providing services that are flexible, respectful, transparent, inclusive, involving and responsive to the needs of parents, the aim was to engage with and to empower parents. Such an approach marks a significant break with past professional practices, which had a more hierarchical, formal and expert basis to the provider-user relationship. Such engagement was also considered to bring benefits for parent-child relationships and to combat social exclusion by developing community cohesion.
Existing evaluations of Sure Start have noted the capacity of programmes to generate new networks of mutual support for parents and family members and to activate volunteers (NESS 2001; Tunstill et al 2002). This study was commissioned by the National Evaluation of Sure Start (NESS), to take a closer look at parents’ experiences of empowerment, at the forms and effects of mutual support, self-help and community action that have been developed, and at the significance of these for work in Sure Start programmes. The study investigates how and in what ways the practices of SSLPs in six case study localities programmes are facilitating individual and community empowerment.
National Evaluation of Sure Start (NESS) Institute for the Study of Children, Families and Social Issues, Birkbeck, University of London.
(Extracted from Empowering Parents in Sure Start Local Programmes by Professor Fiona Williams and Dr Harriet Churchill)
To read the full report visit http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/everychildmatters/earlyyears/surestart/whatsurestartdoes/.
