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This book disseminates important insights gained from the National Evaluation of Sure Start (NESS). The contributors present the effects of Sure Start from a range of perspectives and explore the successful and problematic aspects of the programme with its vision of improving the life chances of the most disadvantaged families. They also map and evaluate the progression of the programme into Children's Centres and Extended Schools. Each contributor provides an overview of their specialist area before outlining the findings from the study and its implications for developing Children's Services. These areas include: - Ethnicity - Childcare - Parents - Special Needs - Maternity Services - Domestic Violence - Buildings and Spaces. The chapters set out the practical lessons learned from these areas for practitioners, professionals and policy makers in the field of children's services, as well as those involved in the setting up of Children's Centres and reform of multi-agency children's services. The book will be relevant to undergraduate students on Childhood Studies Degrees, Early Years Professional Foundation Degrees students, postgraduate students on National Qualification for Managers of Children's Centres and Masters related to Integrated Children's Services. It is also for those with an interest in anti-poverty intervention programmes for young children and their families around the world.

This book makes the lessons learned from the evaluation of Sure Start accessible to the expanding number of practitioners, professionals, students, parents and other interested parties who will benefit from the reform of children′s services through Extended Schools and Children′s Centres.

This article focuses on the design and application of an instrument, the Programme Variability Rating Scale (PVRS), to measure the effectiveness of a complex social intervention in the UK. Sure Start aimed to improve outcomes for children aged under four years living in disadvantaged areas on a wide range of health, educational and social indicators. The PVRS was devised for use in the National Evaluation of Sure Start (NESS) to measure programme proficiency. It consisted of 18 dimensions (eg. parental empowerment, user identification, flexibility of service delivery), each with seven levels of proficiency. It was applied to 150 Sure Start local programmes involved in a longitudinal study of the impact of the intervention on a range of child and parental outcomes. Ratings of more or less proficient processes were related, using discriminant-function analysis, with the impact outcomes from the cross-sectional study of almost 20,000 children. The 18 dimensions of proficiency of the PVRS made a significant differentiation between the most and least effective programmes.

IN THE mid-seventies, I was collecting material for a book about women who worked for free in their communities.

Mog Ball finds plenty of individual attention at an open Borstal and few signs of the short, sharp shock treatment.

'All over the town, private girls' schools are turning hopeful parents away.' Mog Ball reports from inside one establishment that gives pride of place to 'feminine accomplishment'