Review of Early Years, Children's Centres & Family Support

Overview

Currently there are 86,000 under-5’s living in Birmingham and Birmingham City Council have a duty to ensure sufficient provision of Children’s Centres and Early Education Entitlement places to meet the needs of these children, in addition our partners across health services ensure provision of  a range of services to support children and their families as they develop. 

The 2013; Safeguarding, Supporting and Educating Young People Green Paper, recommended a number of reviews, the Early Years, Children’s Centres and Family Support Review being one.  

This Review sets out to examine how early years services produce improved outcomes for children and their families, and will focus on the following areas

• Researching cost-effective good quality early interventions
• Mapping the current services available
• Listening to what children, parents and local people value about Early Years Services
• Looking for the best we can afford

In order to have a breadth of expertise and objectivity we have a number of partners supporting the review

• Representatives from Private, Voluntary and Independent Early Years Providers
• Representatives from Children’s Centres
• Representative Head Teachers from Primary and Nursery Schools
• Health - both commissioner and provider services such as midwifery and health visiting
• The Children’s Society and the Innovation Unit, who are leading local conversations with parents, children and community members.  They are also working with local key stakeholders help shape proposed future options for service delivery.
• iMPOWER, who are working with Birmingham City Council as a critical friend in our drive to improve children’s services
• Centre for Research in Early Childhood (CREC) are leading with regard to a literature review including services and interventions that have worked in other areas and what makes a good intervention in the early years.

Currently we are gathering information and data which will be analysed and presented to the multi-agency reference group for ‘sense checking’. The review will conclude this first stage in July 2014 with an options report for proposed service delivery.

Why your views matter

Formal consultation on changes to early years services will not begin until we have an idea of our options for the future.  One of the main aims of this review is to provide those options. 

This pre-consultation work is for those who wish to have a voice in the review, to share ideas on how we can tackle the challenges that Birmingham and its citizens face to provide the best for our Children & Families during the Early Years. 

We want to hear the views of citizens and practitioners within the Early Years, Children's Centre & Family Support environments.  These views will provide some of the information which will inform the review.

Recently we held an online survey for Parents, Carers and Practitioners, we are now analysing the results of this survey and will publish the results here soon.  The Early Years, Children’s Centres and Family Support Review continues until July.

What happens next

The responses recieved and the information provided will be analysed and studied by the Early Years Review Team.  This information will then be used, along with other data, to inform the Options Report which will be produced towards the end of the review.