Aug 2007 03

Sure Start – A Sure Failure7

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Sure Start, a government program designed to give “children the best possible start in life", is a textbook case of a bureaucratic pet-project gone wrong.  The scheme bears every hallmark of government failure: it is complex and expensive, has undergone mission creep and ultimately failed in its objectives. 

The scheme started off as a means of helping the poorest families from pregnancy until the children were four years old, although has since undergone massive expansion and now covers children up to age 14 (or 16 if the child is disabled).  It is, of course, a noble and worthwhile aim to help the children of the poorest families develop in a manner that does not fundamentally hinder their long-term potential.  A meritocratic, mobile (and so prosperous) society requires that people from all income levels are able to succeed, and so, as a society, we ought to take steps to remove barriers to social mobility.  There is nothing wrong, then, with the desire to minimise the disadvantages suffered by children of the poorest families.  However, we cannot judge government projects on their intentions; we must look at their results.

Unsurprisingly, Sure Start has been a categorical failure when it comes to producing desired results.  A report commissioned by the government found that money had been wasted on bureaucracy and has seen resources redistributed away from the poorest towards the middle class, whilst a study by the University of Hull found that the scheme has failed ethnic minorities.  Middle class mothers are using the scheme to access cheap childcare (and famously to pay for taxi fares), whilst studies have found that children from disadvantaged backgrounds living in Sure Start areas are adversely affected by the scheme.

Yet despite all these failings, and despite the £6 billion of taxpayers’ money that has already been spent, the Daily Mail reports (currently not online) that the government has just announced another £4 billion of funding.  This is typical of a government attitude which believes that any problem can be solved by throwing more taxpayers’ money at it.  If a scheme is failing it must be because it is under-funded, not because it creates perverse incentives and relies on bureaucratic competence: not because it is fundamentally flawed.  A government attitude that refuses to tackle institutional failings, but just relies on spending more of our money.

If government really wanted to help the poorest people it should take a long and serious look at the tax and benefits system.  It is ludicrous to tax the poorest people, channel that money through layers of bureaucracy, where vast amounts of it will only be wasted and used to line bureaucrats’ pockets, and then give it back to poor people in the guise of some politician’s latest headline grapping wheeze.  Better, surely, to allow the poorest people to keep more of their own income in the first place through cutting their taxes.  The annual gross salary of a minimum wage worker is about £10,250; the tax free allowance for next year will be £5,225.  Now, the principle behind any minimum wage is surely that it is the minimum level of income that the state decides an individual can live on.  Why, then, is the state taxing £5,000 of income that it has already decreed that the individual cannot live without?  Making the first £10,250 of income tax free would do more to help the children of the poorest people than any overly complicated bureaucratic project, for not only is it immoral that the state confiscates income it deems vital, but it also acts as a crippling disincentive to work.  The marginal tax rates on the poorest families are such that often it makes absolutely no economic sense to leave welfare and start work; it makes absolutely no economic sense to bring up children in a stable long term relationship.  Government welfare schemes and ludicrous tax codes our hurting the very people they were designed to help.

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  • http://www.philtaylor.org.uk Phil Taylor

    I enjoyed reading this but would really have appreciated some references (links) so that I could read further.

  • http://thepurplescorpion.blogspot.com Purple Scorpion

    Nicely put. If you abolish Sure Start, and use the saving (including the administrative savings) to raise the income tax threshold, poorer childless households will be better off, and well off families with children will be worse off?
    At what income level would families with 1, 2, 3 children become worse off?
    (I’m ignoring the dynamic effects of reducing tax, because that’s not what this discussion is about.)

  • Lost in Kate Winslet

    The SureStart project was based on the results from the HeadStart programme which was set up as part of LBJ’s tenure as US President (referred to as “Great Society” legislations). Because there is 40 years to research, that research shows that appropriate intervention at an early stage brings long term benefits to society. This is where the ratio of $1 investment brings $7 of returns to society comes from.
    So in one way, its far to early to assess reasonably the cost/benefit of SureStart to the UK.
    What we can assess is how effective is the delivery of SureStart to the communities it is meant to serve. And its delivery where New Labour has patently failed.
    As someone who had three years experience of working within the SureStart programme, I left thinking that it was little more than a job creation scheme for the middle classes. I feel depressed just thinking about the issues, mainly because I felt set up to fail. The SureStart Unit in Whitehall lived in cloud-cuckoo land when it came to real costs and expenditure. Cabinet ministers were micro-managing expenditure so far that they needed to approve capital projects which spent as little as £100,000 of their capital funds. Add in the fact that she didn’t actually understand the project briefs and well you get my point.
    The recent switch to Children’s Centres effectively downgraded SureStart to extending the Dept of Education’s National Curriculum to 3 year olds. The capital budget for Children’s Centres saw capital spending per child cut by a third. And this with the construction sector expecting industry inflation to rise by 33% in the next three years.
    The wider the SureStart programme has been expanded, the more devalued it has become. If the government were serious about their rhetoric then spending on SureStart would be 200% higher. It needs significant amounts of money to succeed in the form it currently takes.
    When I have time, I’ll explain this in more details.

  • Miss Tooty

    So why is it up to the taxpayers alliance to question this and not the official opposition party?.

  • Tax Cuts Please

    Because Miss Tooty the TPA is allowed to speak its mind ;)

  • unclezip

    And will you be including the latest National Evlauation documents from Sure Start which indicate, as is the case with many social interventions, that as the service has developed the initial differences in provision and benefit have declined? Just to clarify, here are the summary points from the research itself (rahte rthan the Daily Mail version).
    Parents of three-year-old children showed less negative parenting while providing their children with a better home learning environment.
    Three-year-old children in SSLP areas had better social development with higher levels of positive social behaviour and independence/self-regulation than children in similar areas not having a SSLP.
    The SSLP effects for positive social behaviour appeared to be a consequence of the SSLP benefits upon parenting.
    Three-year-old children in SSLP areas had higher immunisation rates and fewer accidental injuries than children in similar areas not having a SSLP; it is possible that instead of reflecting
    positive effects of SSLPs these health-related benefits could have been a result of differences in when measurements were taken of children living in SSLP areas and those living elsewhere.
    Families living in SSLP areas used more child- and family-related services than those living elsewhere.
    The effects associated with SSLPs appeared to apply to all of the resident population, rather than suggesting positive and negative effects for different subgroups as detected in the earlier (2005) report.
    The more consistent benefits associated with SSLPs in the current study compared with the earlier study may well reflect the greater exposure of children and families to better organised and more effective services, as SSLPs have matured over time, though it remains possible that differences in research design across the two studies could also be responsible.

  • trutti fruti

    I agree with the comments made about the ineffectivness of the whole Sure start agenda which is about putting middle class expectations on our whole sociiety including the ‘hard to reach’ and have by large remained elusive and ‘hard to reach’. This govt has thrown a lot of money into projects without looking at value for money and most local authorites have spent money on higher and middle management box tickers rather than get people on the ground. How do you change people’s attitudes when they don’t want to change. Why do we reward teenagers for happy babies by giving them all the freebies and special groups and why are the Sure start sessions being used by people who are on career breaks- or maternity leave rather those in our target group? Call me a cynic – but the Surestart agenda has never worked and children’s centres has just made it worse.
    The Head start in the US is a very precise service that has a specific remit rather than the ‘touchy feely’ core offer that says a lot without substance.
    Having worked in this area for the last 5 years, I hope that the next govt has the sense to rationlise its spending and pulls the plug on this nanny state project.!