Sure Start Children's Centres were always intended to form a vital new part of the architecture of support for children and families. As local authorities and their partners review and reconfigure their services, centres remain crucial to the delivery of both community based early intervention and targeted support for vulnerable families.

There have been great strides made in embedding centres as the cornerstone of children and family support services in many communities across England. The economic climate of central spending cuts and on-going reductions in local authority budgets means they need to work harder than ever before to deliver the support families need and make every penny work.

That's why it is so important that children's centres continue to develop their services and support in their local community.  The movement of resources from the early intervention grant, to the dedicated schools grant, means councils needing to find ever more radical solutions to reduce costs, whilest at the same time continuing to provide high quality support. Some have argued the response should be to move to a more targeted focus on disadvantaged communities, with the inevitable closure of Centres that would follow as a result. 

Others advocate a closer link with health and a greater focus on a child's first two years. 

These are both valid challenges and proposals at a time when funds are scarce.  However they remain, for 4Children, fundamentally false choices. We need an approach that means children and families get the ‘joined up' local support that we know they need, in a way that tackles the underlying causes of disadvantage early but also supports the immediate needs of highly vulnerable families today.

Children's centres remain not only the intervention most able to deliver significant outcomes in this way, but also do so in way that can maximise impact and reduce costs. 

That is not to deny the challenges faced by local authorities in maintaining and developing their services for children and families – including children's centres.  But it is to demand greater recognition and engagement from a wider set of partners who are seeking to improve outcomes for children and families.