Time for a rethink

From private nurseries to public children's centres? In this thought-provoking article Professor Peter Moss addresses implications surrounding the acquisition of childcare settings.

“Wipe them out”! The Social Construction of Children’s Centres

The future for Children’s Centres in England looks bleak.. A change in government in the UK in 2010 saw a change in political perspective that was manifested in one way as austerity. The effects of austerity impacted on a range of public services including Children’s Centres. Children’s Centres also came under government scrutiny resulting in a change of focus in their activities from a core offer of providing services to having a core purpose. The study used a flexible qualitative design to produce a critical discourse analysis about the social construction of Children’s Centres. A range of publicly available documents were gathered to provide naturalistic data relating to Children’s Centres. In addition, six Children’s Centre workers were purposefully selected to take part in a semi structured focus group interview. The subsequent analysis of the document and interview data revealed a range of rhetorical devices used by speakers to construct their perceptions of Children’s Centres. These constructions were organised under four dominant discourses; a discourse of recognition, a discourse of pragmatism, a discourse of pessimism and a discourse of change. One common factor in these four discourses was the role of the UK government. Children’s Centres did not appear to get recognition for some the work they did with families but there was a pragmatism about what Children’s Centres could provide during a period of austerity. There was pessimism about what was happening to Children’s Centres especially in relation to vulnerable families but what seemed inevitable was Children’s Centres were changing.

Why pioneer camps survived the collapse of the Soviet Union

The article analyses the survival of the children’s centres, Artek and Orlyonok, during the post-socialist transformation. It is based on 50 interviews with employees who worked there starting in the late-Soviet era. Artek and Orlyonok were exemplary children’s camps, subordinated to the Central Committee of the Komsomol. Since the early 1960s, they have functioned as schools for distinguished teenagers who were considered ‘good examples’ for other children. In this article, I have made an ethnographic analysis of Artek and Orlyonok employees’ late-Soviet experiences. This analysis shows how the agency of Soviet counsellors and camp directors became a creative interpretation of the governmental order to raise the children as active Soviet citizens. Camp educators transformed it in line with the idea to base their agency on ‘common human values’, which was spread in the Soviet educational field in the post-Stalin era. As a result, the Soviet teaching experiences gained in these education centres were heterogeneous. When a child-centred paradigm was later introduced to the post-Soviet educational system, the camps adopted the most applicable practices from their Soviet experiences.

Impact of cuts to local government spending on Sure Start children’s centres on childhood obesity in England: a longitudinal ecological study

BackgroundChildhood obesity is rising in disadvantaged areas in England. Sure Start children’s centres provide community-based services for children <5 years and their parents, including many services that can support healthy weight, directly or indirectly. Since 2010, austerity-driven cuts to local authority (LA) budgets have led to substantially reduced public expenditure on Sure Start services. We assessed whether childhood obesity prevalence has increased more since 2010 in those areas in England that experienced greater cuts to spending on Sure Start.MethodsThis longitudinal ecological study covers the period 2010/2011–2017/2018. Our exposure was LA expenditure on Sure Start, using Department for Education data. Our main outcome was LA obesity prevalence at age 4–5 years, using National Child Measurement Programme data. We used fixed-effects panel regression to quantify the association between change in spending and change in the prevalence of childhood obesity.ResultsSpending on Sure Start children’s centres decreased on average 53% over the study period, with deeper cuts in more deprived LAs. Each 10% spending cut was associated with a 0.34% relative increase in obesity prevalence the following year (95% CI 0.15% to 0.53%). We estimated there were an additional 4575 children with obesity (95% CI 1751 to 7399) and 9174 overweight or obese (95% CI 2689 to 15 660) compared with expected numbers had funding levels been maintained.ConclusionsCuts to spending on Sure Start children’s centres were associated with increased childhood obesity. With deprived areas experiencing bigger spending cuts, reinvesting in these services may, alongside wider benefits for child development, contribute to reducing inequalities in childhood obesity.