Where Sure Start began
Sure Start was announced in 1998 and introduced in 1999 as a national programme for families with children under five, starting in the most disadvantaged neighbourhoods. Local centres brought health services, parenting support, early learning, childcare and help with finding work into one place. A family could see several professionals in the same building, and those professionals could share what they knew, talk to one another and agree a plan. Reviews after children’s deaths had repeatedly reported professionals each holding part of the picture, so the idea mattered for safeguarding as well as for convenience.
The programme grew to more than 3,000 centres. At its peak in 2009–10 it accounted for £2.7 billion of public spending, in 2023–24 prices. Several evaluations followed, each looking at children of a different age. They are easiest to follow in the order they were published.
What each evaluation found
2005: the first impact report. Researchers led by Professor Edward Melhuish, then at Birkbeck, University of London, studied programmes about three years after they began. They called their findings “at best, early indications”. There were few overall effects. Children of non-teenage mothers gained a little, while children from more disadvantaged families (teenage mothers, lone parents, households with no one in work) appeared to do worse. The age-three report in 2008 (below) found almost no evidence of those adverse effects. Its authors cautioned that the change might partly reflect differences in method as well as better services.
2007: Parliament asks about value for money. The House of Commons Committee of Public Accounts examined Sure Start while the national evaluation was still running. That evaluation compared whole areas, not families who used services with families who did not, so the Committee found it “difficult to tell” whether centres gave value for money. The government department responsible could not say at the hearing how much had been spent since 1998. It later confirmed £4.8 billion on early years initiatives between 1997 and 2006, of which £2.1 billion went to Sure Start local programmes and children’s centres. The Committee also found that over half of local authorities were not monitoring performance.
2008: age three. The Lancet published results for 5,883 children in 93 Sure Start areas, compared with 1,879 children in 72 deprived areas without a programme. Five of 14 outcomes were better in Sure Start areas, including children’s social behaviour, less negative parenting and a better home learning environment.
2010: age five. The national evaluation compared children with a different group, drawn from the Millennium Cohort Study. Of 21 outcomes, eight differed: six better, two worse. Children in Sure Start areas were less likely to be overweight, and mothers reported a more stimulating home learning environment and less harsh discipline. Mothers also reported more depressive symptoms. The authors called the effects “putative”, because the two groups were surveyed two years apart by different teams.
2012: age seven. Four of 15 outcomes were better, including less harsh discipline and a more stimulating home learning environment, as mothers reported. There were no consistent differences in children’s educational, social, behavioural or health outcomes, and none were worse. The evaluators suggested children elsewhere may have caught up, because free part-time pre-school reached nearly all three-year-olds from 2004.
2015: children’s centres. The Oxford-led Evaluation of Children’s Centres in England (Pam Sammons, Kathy Sylva and colleagues) found consistent but small positive effects. They were strongest for mothers and families: better maternal mental health, less chaotic homes and a better home learning environment. Effects on children were fewer, and there was no significant effect on household employment. Centres that offered more named programmes and worked across agencies were linked with better outcomes. The centres were being cut and restructured while the study ran.
2025: the long-run evaluation. The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), funded by the Nuffield Foundation, followed children who lived within 2.5 kilometres of a centre. Compared with children with less access, they did better in school assessments at ages 7, 11 and 16. Hospital admissions rose at age one, which the IFS reads partly as earlier contact with services, and fell by age 15. Teenagers reported half as many difficulties such as depression and anxiety as siblings with less access, and unauthorised absence at 15 fell by 15%.
The results were not all positive. Children with early access were more likely to have a criminal record by 16, driven by a rise in cautions, and the fall in convictions was not statistically significant. There was no significant effect on the number of children looked after. An IFS report in 2024 had suggested about 13% fewer convictions. The 2025 report changed how it weights areas, and the earlier crime headline no longer stands.
The IFS put the up-front cost at £2.7 billion per year group. That is the same figure as the 2009–10 peak annual spend, which the IFS uses as a stand-in for what one year group’s services would have cost. It put the total benefits at about twice that, roughly £2 for every £1. Most of that benefit is projected lifetime earnings and future tax, not money already repaid. Counting savings and projected tax, the net cost to government is about £270 million, and the authors say Sure Start did not entirely pay for itself for government.
Why the dates matter
A child born in 1999 started school in 2004 or 2005 and sat GCSEs in 2015 or 2016. Results at 16 could not be seen in any year group before the middle of the 2010s, and the earnings figures can only be projected from them.
Parliament asked about value for money in 2007, before the first year groups had left primary school. The ring-fence on children’s centre funding was removed in 2011, and the early intervention funding that councils received fell by more than 64% by 2017/18, according to the Sutton Trust. That funding covered more than children’s centres. The IFS reports on teenagers came after those cuts, in 2019 and 2025.
Each evaluation reported on the children it could study, at the age it could study them. None could answer questions that only later results could.
What the evidence does not show
It does not show that Sure Start reduced offending or the number of children in care. It does not show that the sums repaid the cost to government within a short period. It does not show which services produced which effects, because records of what each family received are lacking. It does not explain why robust evidence took so long to arrive. The Public Accounts Committee, the National Audit Office and others describe the gap, without establishing its cause.
YFL presents this as a reading of the published evidence at this date. Later work may change it. The YFL essay Sure Start: What Was Promised, What Was Measured, and When It Was Known sets out the sources behind each figure.
Topics: #InOtherWords #SureStart #EarlyYears #ChildrensCentres #EarlyIntervention #EvidenceAndPolicy
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