News

Standards must not be compromised in the rush to meet the government's targets on the creation of children's centres over the next five years, children's services workers were warned last week.

Daycare Trust chair Lisa Harker told delegates at the annual Sure Start children's centres conference that quality had to come first, and that the thinking and principles behind children's centres must not be lost in the race to expand.

"There can be no compromise on the standard of services provided for children," said Harker, adding that there was a danger of the process becoming a "rebranding exercise" with anything and everything being called a children's centre in the drive to meet the government's goal of 2,500 children's centres by 2008 and 3,500 by 2010. Currently there are just 188 children's centres across England.

"We have to avoid any centre that provides an additional service automatically being called a children's centre," Harker said. "We have to know what we mean by children's centre."

Delegates at the conference raised concerns about whether the agencies they were working with - in particular councils - were ready to take on their role in expanding children's centres numbers.

"For those of us at the forefront, we are faced with uncertainty," Carol Pitman, programme manager of Weymouth and Portland Sure Start in Dorset, said. "A lot of those agencies that we are trying to change are not ready to go there yet."

Education secretary Ruth Kelly, who was giving her first early years' speech since her appointment, accepted that the government was expecting "huge change", but added that it would do whatever was necessary to make sure children's centres worked.

She said that this could involve placing a duty on local authorities to involve parents to ensure the "grass roots up" approach at the heart of Sure Start was not lost.

"It is essential that, in moving towards a universal system, local authorities and voluntary sector partners ensure parents remain involved," Kelly said.

"We want to see local ownership, and parents directly involved in the design of Sure Start children's centres. We will have to work with you to get this right."