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Sure Start was one of a number of social policy initiatives brought forward by the New Labour government in the late 1990s, which incorporated ideas about the importance of area-based initiatives (in health as well as education),1 of strengthening communities, of tackling social exclusion and child poverty in particular, of making interventions 'evidence-based' and of 'modernising' public services by encouraging joined-up government and an 'integrated' approach that cut across departmental and professional boundaries (Blair, 1997). Labour made family policy an explicit part of its legislative programme and devoted particularly large expenditure to subsidising part-time early years education for all three and four-year olds and childcare on both the demand and supply sides. The amount spent on Sure Start was less, but it was a 'flagship' policy for the new administration that was also perceived to be popular (Glass, 2006; Eisenstadt, 2002).2
Sure Start was an early intervention programme, intended to bring together a range of services, including family support, health services and support for special needs as well as childcare and education, in disadvantaged areas. The aim was to 'invest'3 in early childhood and to 'help to ensure that children, particularly those at risk of social exclusion are ready to learn when they arrive at school' (HMT, 1998: para. 1.14). Beginning in 1998 with 60 'trailblazer' local programmes (SSLPs) and with a further 250 SSLPs planned, expenditure was more than doubled in 2000 in order to fund 530 programmes by 2004.4 Labour made a ten-year funding commitment to Sure Start and also funded a major national evaluation project.
It took three years for an SSLP to reach maturity, and the final wave of local programmes was not approved until 2002. Yet in 2003 it was decided that SSLPs would be replaced by Children's Centres, which would cover the whole country, albeit with a limited set of services for better-off areas. By 2006, the majority of Sure Start local programmes were functioning as Children's Centres. Naomi Eisenstadt, the Director of the Sure Start Unit set up in 1998 under the auspices of both the DfES and DH, wrote in 2003 to assure Sure Start local programmes that 'by embedding SSLPs in the local authority's strategic vision...