Today is the start of the first annual National Sure Start Children’s Centre Week, with a whole range of activities taking place across the country.

For more details of participating centres in your area – and for access to central government resources – visit: http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/everychildmatters/earlyyears/surestart/surestartchildrenscentres/natssccweek/natssccweek/

This week is clearly a great opportunity to promote the exceptional work being carried out in many children’s centres, and to raise the profile of children’s centres more generally. So don’t hold back – get local press coverage for your activities, and get your existing parents on board. There is much to celebrate indeed.

Worryingly, though, the national headlines today – so easily hijacked by any critical news agenda – seem to be focusing on a joint report from the Institute of Directors and the Taxpayers’ Alliance (see http://www.taxpayersalliance.com/50bil.pdf).

According to this report, abolishing the Sure Start project would save £1,456 million from 2010-11 onwards. The report’s authors argue that Sure Start is “failing to deliver on its promises”. However with more than 3000 children’s centres across the country, many of which have only opened over the last few years, it is hard to understand how such a conclusion can be justified. Indeed, one could argue that children’s centres are developing and providing exactly the types of support and services that have been demanded following the recent tragic incidents that have upset us all. The report uses SATs results at age 11 as a key reason to criticise – but given that many of the children who have recently undertaken Key Stage 2 SATs would never have had access to any Sure Start support, such measures seem disingenuous.

It seems that many in politics, think tanks and the media are quick to condemn “the system” but also quick to jump on any opportunity to claim less should be done by the public sector … especially when it provides services to often hidden groups such as ordinary familes just trying to get by day-to-day. The aim of Children’s Centres has always been to provide a “Sure Start” that then will lead to better outcomes for children, their families, and indeed wider communities in the long term . Unsurprisingly, identifying the quantifiable benefits of such a huge and long-term investment is not going to be easy straight away; children do not grow up in a couple of years! However the voices of parents and children themselves show that for many Sure Start has provided an invaluable lifeline, and opportunities previously unimagined.

Big, expensive, national programmes do need to be evaluated. However it seems sad that a report which clearly has a particular agenda (as demonstrated by the views expressed elsewhere in it) is being allowed to overshadow the very many successes that have been part of the Sure Start programme.