Child health clinics, breastfeeding support, groups for new parents, sleep and weaning workshops, speech and language therapy, drop-in physio sessions, parenting courses in child development and mental health, stay and play sessions (including specifically for dads and male carers), music therapy classes, support groups for women and children who have suffered domestic violence, a housing clinic, groups for children with Send and cookery courses.
These are just some of the services available to parents in the borough where I live: Islington, in north London. They exist under the banner of Bright Start, a clever – and I suspect slightly sneaky – rebranding of Sure Start. Sure Start was the Blair government’s leading early years policy, offering area-based holistic support to families with children under five in England (it was Flying Start in Wales and Best Start in Scotland). But since 2010, as a direct result of Tory austerity, 1,416 Sure Start centres in England have closed. Now that the child poverty taskforce is to recommend to the Labour government a return of the scheme, I thought that it was worth examining what it’s like to live in an area that kept it.
