Key Findings: Five Year Interview

All of the findings have taken into account a wide range of family and area background characteristics. The comparisons are between two groups:

1. five year old children and families living in Sure Start areas
2. five year old children and families living in similar areas without Sure Start

These comparisons revealed mixed effects in the Sure Start group, most being beneficial and a couple being negative in character.

The main impacts identified for children were that:

• children growing up in SSLP areas had lower BMIs than children in non-SSLP areas. This was due to their being less likely to be overweight with no difference for obesity.
• children growing up in SSLP areas had better physical health than children in non-SSLP areas.

Mothers in Sure Start areas reported that they were:

• providing a more stimulating home learning environment for their children.
• providing a less chaotic home environment for their children.
• experiencing greater life satisfaction.
• engaging in less harsh discipline.
• experiencing more depressive symptoms.
• Being less likely to visit their child’s school for parent/teacher meetings or other arranged visits.

The team also looked at how the children and families have change between the previous interviews and the 5 year interview. This change was compared with the other group (where Sure Start was not available).

Mothers in Sure Start areas reported that they had:

• more improvement in the home learning environment.
• more positive change in life satisfaction.
• a greater decrease in harsh discipline (i.e. greater improvement).
• a greater decrease in workless household status (from 9 months to 5 years of age).
• less positive change in self regulation (This was due to non-Sure Start children catching up with the Sure Start group that had been ahead at age 3. There was no difference between the two groups in self-regulation at age 5)

Background

The overall goal of Sure Start Local Programmes (SSLPs) was to enhance the life chances for young children growing up in disadvantaged neighbourhoods. SSLPs not only aimed to enhance health and well-being during the early years, but to increase the chances that children would enter school ready to learn, be academically successful in school, socially successful in their communities and occupationally successful when adult. Indeed, by improving - early in life- the developmental trajectories of children at risk of compromised development, SSLPs aimed to break the intergenerational transmission of poverty, school failure and social exclusion.

Methodology

As part of an assessment of the impact of SSLPs on child and family functioning, the Impact Study of the National Evaluation of Sure Start (NESS) has followed up over 7000 5-year-olds and their families in 150 SSLP areas who were initially studied when the children were 9 months and 3 years old. The 5 year old study followed up a randomly selected subsample (79%) of the children and families previously studied at 9 months and 3 years.

The group of Millennium Cohort Study (MCS) children and their families, against which the NESS sample was compared, was selected from the entire MCS cohort. Their selection was based upon identifying and selecting children living in areas with similar economic and demographic characteristics to those in which the NESS sample resided, but which were not SSLP-designated areas and thus did not offer SSLP services. This enabled the NESS research team to make comparisons with children and families from areas as similar as possible to the NESS Impact Study areas to detect the potential effects of SSLPs on children and families.

Conclusion

The results show that there were six positive SSLP effects and two negative SSLP effects, but many non- effects, especially with regard to children’s development.

While positive effects exceeded negative ones, the number of outcomes where there were no differences between the two samples exceeds both put together. The positive effects discerned apply primarily to the parents in terms of greater life satisfaction, engaging in less harsh discipline, providing a less chaotic home environment and a more cognitively stimulating home learning environment.

Only in the case of physical health did children apparently benefit directly.

The negative effects were that mothers experienced more depressive symptoms and parents in SSLP areas were less likely to attend school meetings.

No SSLP effects emerged in the case of “school readiness”, defined in terms of children’s early language, numeracy and social skills needed to succeed in schools, as measured by the Foundation Stage Profile. This may be due to high levels of participation in the 3 and 4 Year Old Free Entitlement to pre-school education across England, which has resulted in many of the MCS children also benefitting from early years learning opportunities.

Change over time

In terms of changes in child and parent functioning over time, in SSLP areas compared to non-SSLP areas mothers in SSLP areas showed greater improvements in life satisfaction, and in the home learning environment and greater decreases in harsh discipline.

Children in SSLP areas, however, showed less positive change in self regulation, that is, their capacity to control or manage their actions. This appeared to be due to the fact that the children in the SSLP areas manifested greater self regulation at age 3, but by the time of the age-5 follow up, the MCS comparison group of children had caught up with them.

Finally, in comparison with those in non-SSLP areas, there was a greater decrease in workless household status (from 9 months to 5 years of age) for families in SSLP areas.