A Dual Approach for Universal and Targeted Services — Learning from Lessons
James Hempsall considers what it means to offer a targeted service while making sure the service is available to everyone. He advocates a return to the original values of Sure Start children’s centres, and placing parents firmly at the centre of decision making.
Much is said about learning the lessons of Sure Start and children’s centres, and my focus in this article, is to consider some of the important ethical issues resulting from the transformation of targeted Sure Start local programmes into universal children’s centres. And how they are relevant now children’s centres are becoming so varied and different. Essentially these issues are the impact on parents’ and families’ autonomy, rights and responsibilities, and the challenges presented by potentially conflicting targeted and universal aspects.
Relative examples offered by the American Head Start programme and the Swedish childcare model are useful too. Children’s centres are at a pivotal point in their development. Building from a successful targeted Sure Start and early excellence programme, they have been universalised with the political aim of becoming a permanent part of the welfare state, now they are being targeted for all sorts of reasons.
Respecting parents as individuals
Children’s centres have occupied a new position in the state’s involvement in parenting, interest in the household, and in children’s early learning. The state’s involvement and intervention tests boundaries at every stage, and challenges our cultural and social expectations of what is acceptable parenting, and what the desired outcomes for children are.
Working in partnership with parents is essential because they should be respected and valued as individuals, with their rights to self-rule and self-determination recognised. Parental autonomy is important because they have the freedom to raise their own children (within acceptable and legal bounds). And children’s centres have an important role in building the capacities and abilities of parents, in trans-generational ways. However, parents do retain their right of choice, within their responsibilities defined by the Children Act (2004).
Full involvement of parents
The full and real involvement of parents in the development, delivery and management of children’s centres is a key mechanism for this; it was a success of local programmes, and some children’s centres, and is essential for the future of children’s centres. It can be achieved through a range of practical methods including:
- ongoing, formal and informal consultation
- annual independent external evaluation
- involving parents in service delivery
- real volunteering opportunities
- developing parents’ forums and peer support groups
- parents’ representation at management, advisory or steering board level
- all at times accessible to parents that also fit in with their work-ready activities, employment, and training.
However, our own values and roles can affect our ability to apply these principles consistently across teams and partner organisations. In my experience, different centres have considered the same actions to be both successful and unsuccessful. Once, I was working with two centres at the same time. One had organised a women’s pampering day as a start to developing trust, relationships, participation and involvement — and found it to be a great success; whilst the other had delegated a small budget to their newly established parents’ group and when they spent the funding themselves on a pampering day — the programme disapproved and asked for the funding back — damaging trust and future participation. So, common values are clearly essential to ensure that we all know what is valuable, and what processes need to be in place to build participation in everything that happens in a children’s centre.
A comprehensive approach also aims to provide services that parents want, trust, and importantly use — thereby breaking barriers to participation, and reaching those parents that services have difficulty including.
The state aims to provide a respectful and community-driven programme of children’s centres, available to all, and enhanced for those that would benefit from extra support. It is key to the early intervention agenda.
Targeted and universal
The terms ‘targeting’ and ‘universal’ are frequently used, often misunderstood and they require sensitive consideration. The targeted nature of services creates its own barriers (including the stigma they are only for ‘failing’ parents), and whilst targeted services appear to have the most benefit for the least advantaged, the ambitions to roll-out the children’s centre strategy universally ‘in a sense’ or even ‘progressively’ are constrained, not by local or national political will, nor lack of evidence of impact, but by financial resources and somewhat unrealistic expectations.
Revisit Sure Start values
Sure Start’s process of working was effectively guided by a set of values, identified early on by the Comprehensive Spending Review in 1998 called Modernising Public Services, and these, in my view should be revisited. Of particular importance for parental autonomy are the values of:
- two-generational — involving parents as well as children
- locally driven — based on consultation and involvement of local parents and communities
- culturally appropriate — sensitive to the needs of all parents and children.
These values recognise the importance of parental participation, and that centres should be consistent — yet individually focused. To achieve this, parents will need to be included in the decision-making surrounding services in three key areas of:
- Parenting — decisions relating to their individual role in caring for their own children, as it is important for parents to make decisions over how their children are raised
- Participation — decisions and informed choices about their participation in children’s centre services, because it is a free and open choice
- Management — decisions made about the development, delivery and management of the children’s centres, as this supports partnership, inclusion and autonomy.
Scandinavian levels of excellence often appear to be the goal, yet the required levels of taxation and expenditure are some way off in times of austerity. Until this position is achieved, the balance of universalisation and targeting will be compromised. This compromised approach will demand sensitive application that acknowledges the complexities of its effects.
Future proofing services
Our continued risk is politicians and funding decision-makers don’t hold their nerve and don’t future proof services for another fifteen years. We are still in our early years, so any criticism is premature. Preventative services cannot and should not be expected to deliver the immediate tangible outcomes that intervention can achieve. Head Start’s experience in the USA has shown a four-fold return in savings in later years, so perhaps the more invested now, the greater levels of savings later. But it did take Head Start a generation to find this evidence. We have not yet had that time.
Children’s centres should importantly be:
- non-stigmatising — as access based on stigma can never be a good thing, even if the eventual outcomes are successful
- multi-faceted — targeting a number of factors
- persistent — lasting long enough to make a real difference.
Targeting while avoiding stigma
The consequences of targeting services, in that a service excludes in the name of focusing its activities, will almost always contain an element of stigma — and maintain the feeling that services are for ‘failing’ families. If there needs to be targeting, to meet the greatest need, this should never be communicated nor promoted. Children’s centres should be made available to as many people as possible, and to achieve this, an enhanced, more generously funded programme of children’s centres should be made available universally — not ‘in a sense’ but in actuality.
Closing attainment and opportunities gaps
As a key equalities strategy, children’s centres and their relative contemporaries have been found to have significant effects on closing attainment and opportunities gaps. To demonstrate and monitor impact, the focus on the collection of evidence should retain its original aim of supporting the whole child’s development, and further embrace the five outcomes (be healthy, stay safe, enjoy and achieve, make a positive contribution, and achieve economic wellbeing). The impact on educational success remains of equal importance, but should not over-shadow other essential outcomes.
To conclude, children’s centres will only be successful if parental autonomy, and the targeted and universal models of this early intervention strategy are recognised and effectively addressed. All targeted social inclusion strategies like children’s centres have exclusion at their core. This is ironic, so whilst seeking to open up access to all, children’s centres need to carefully balance their thirst for targeted delivery. The original values and approach identified by the 1998 Comprehensive Spending Review provide a useful framework.
There are strong arguments to support targeting and universality, as both have positive outcomes. True universality may be unachievable in the short and medium terms; in the interim, any future strategy should have a combination of both elements. A dual approach could ensure that children’s centres make the most difference to the most disadvantaged. Duality would enable everyone to access children’s centres — children and parents that need it the most, would benefit the most, and those that would also benefit and have a less urgent need. All have a right to make the most of their potential, and we have a moral duty to provide preventative and interventionist services in children’s centres.
James Hempsall has worked in the sector for 25 years. He is a former playworker, children’s centre manager, further education lecturer, development worker and regional manager/senior projects manager for a childcare charity. His career has been spent supporting organisations to develop quality and sustainable childcare. James is also the National Support Director of the Department for Education Achieving Two Year Olds contract, supporting the roll-out of the free entitlement for least-advantaged two year olds.
Head Start Impact Study and Follow Up 2000–2015
Quality Matters in Early Childhood Education and Care: Sweden, OECD
