Inquiry session into delivery models of Sure Start children's centres

4 January 2012

About the LGA

• representing and advocating for local government and making the case for greater devolution
• helping local authorities tackle their challenges and take advantage of new opportunities to deliver better value for money services. 

Introduction

1. On 14 December 2011, a representative from the LGA gave oral evidence to the Sure Start All-Party Parliamentary Group Inquiry Session. The LGA was invited to supplement this with written evidence.  
2. We therefore took this opportunity to provide further detail on the work of the LGA in supporting local authorities to provide children's centres, focusing much more effectively on those families who need them the most, while achieving value for money.
3. Local authorities are facing combined pressures of a 25 per cent reduction to the central funding for children's centres and services. While at the same time having to provide additional services; for example, following the 'Baby P' case, demands on child protection services rose sharply. These increases will very likely need to be sustained into the future, and of course need to be funded.

Does LGA evaluate the performance of local authorities in delivering children's services?

1. The LGA is a national membership organisation run by its members from all political parties. We are not an inspectorate and as such do not evaluate the performance of local government. Instead we support, promote and improve local government. One of the main ways we do this is through 'Taking the lead', our self-improvement offer to assist councils to strengthen their accountability and revolutionise the way they evaluate and improve services. 
2. The new approach to sector-led improvement in children's services is being developed by the Children's Improvement Board (CIB), a partnership board set up in 2011 by the LGA, the Association of Directors of Children's Services (ADCS), SOLACE (Society of Local Authority Chief Executives) and the Department for Education (DfE). 

Does the LGA have a role to play in sharing good practice around delivering children centres between local authorities?

Yes. A key methodology for supporting self-improvement is through sharing good practice among our members. We do this through numerous tools:

• LGA's Children and Young People Programme's monthly bulletin, which is circulated to around 18,000 local government officers and members.
• LGA's Communities of Practice is a website for sharing information across local government and the public sector. It currently has around 100,000 sign-ups. It will be replaced in the near future with Knowledge Hub, which will provide an improved platform to share information and good practice. 
• Local Government Inform is a free online benchmarking service which allows anyone in the local government sector to access, compare and analyse performance data, and present their findings (see www.local.gov.uk/about-lginform).
• LGA recently funded a research report on 'Targeting children's centre services on the most needy families', September 2011. This report included numerous good practice case studies.
• LGA's Children and Young People Programme run events to share good practice with members.
• The Children's Improvement Board (CIB) is a key tool to drive self-improvement in local authorities' Children and Young People's services and plays a key role in sharing good practice. See section below for information on the ways it does this.

What is the purpose of the Children's Improvement Board?

1. The LGA's new Children's Improvement Board (CIB) is overseeing a new programme to help councils benefit and learn from each other and from voluntary organizations to build even further on their record of delivering new and better ways of doing things.
2. The CIB's mission is to deliver:

• excellence through universal improvement in outcomes 
• targeted support in the event of service failure or declining performance 
• innovation and implementation of new policy initiatives. 

1. The CIB is a direction-setting and decision-making group that is responsible for the overall delivery of the programme to develop a sector-led improvement system for children's services. 
2. Following on from this, the CIB has agreed to continue the support to councils on children's centres sufficiency. In addition, 27 payment-by-results trial areas have been approved and councils are developing their work and supporting each other through action learning sets.
3. CIB commissions work to identify and share good practice within the sector. This has included commissioning SERCO to undertake sufficiency work for Sure Start children's centres, including sharing good practice case studies. Furthermore, CIB have recently commissioned C4EO to identify innovative examples of emerging local practice in relation to children and youth services to share with the sector.

What is the LGA's view on the strength of health partnerships at a local level?

1. Health and Wellbeing Boards (HWBs) will be at the heart of the local health system and are the new partnership arrangements between local councils, GPs and other health professionals, and local Healthwatch. HWBs will be responsible for improving the health of the local population and tackling health inequalities. The LGA's research has shown that local areas are taking different approaches to setting up HWBs and it is too early to identify which will be most effective. In general, the most effective approach is dependent on what works best locally. There are a number of areas showcased in the recently published resource 'New Partnerships, New Opportunities' which identify universal good practice.
2. The LGA is working with the Department of Health to support the early implementers of the HWBs through the national learning network for HWBs. Support includes a virtual learning hub hosted by the Communities of Practice platform; national learning sets with a number of key themes including one on 'Improving services through more effective joint working for children and families'; and leadership development for elected members, clinical leaders and other local partners. This is to help ensure HWBs are developed in line with the development of clinical commissioning groups, Healthwatch, and guidance around joint strategic needs assessment (JSNA) and a Joint Health and Wellbeing Strategy.
3. The LGA will continue to work with key stakeholders to ensure strong partnerships. We will continue to support councils as they tackle challenges around HWBs' statutory functions.
4. The responsibility for children's public health services will be split between the NHS Commissioning Board (for children aged 0-5) and local authorities (for children and young people aged 5-19) until 2015. After this time it will be transferred to local government. The LGA is concerned about the fragmentation of children's health and wellbeing services until 2015. Many local authorities believe that the split responsibility will lead to the fragmentation of children's services and may undermine existing services such as Sure Start Children Centres which are already established in every local authority area. Instead, we propose local authorities should have responsibility for commissioning children's public health services from pregnancy throughout childhood. 

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16 May 2012