Schools and children's centres: an integrated approach

As fiscal pressures increase many local authorities are reviewing the way children’s centres are run and managed. One model is for schools and children’s centres, particularly those located on the same site, to enter into a closer operational partnership. Nicola Beech went to find out what this looks like in practice and the real opportunities integrated working can bring.

Greenside Primary School and Children’s Centre has been running as a fully integrated centre for nearly 10 years, since being designated as an Early Excellence Centre in 2002. From the beginning, it has been managed by the headteacher and governing body, with one budget for the whole centre. John Rogers, headteacher of Greenside oversees both the school and the children’s centre and Emma Lewis is the children’s centre co-ordinator.

Greenside serves the area of West Droylsden, a community of mostly White British families, four miles to the east of Manchester city centre. Droylsden is an area with significant issues surrounding youth unemployment, teenage pregnancy, crime and low levels of literacy and numeracy. The large primary school has an above average proportion of pupils known to be eligible for free school meals and a statement of special educational needs.

For Greenside, the integrated model developed over time.

“We started off in a purely practical partnership with the child and family centre down the road,” says John. “Then all of a sudden, just by going out beyond the school gates, we started interacting with families and meeting wider needs, not just academic needs. Although the teaching and learning focus of the school remained the priority, we realised that what happens in families and family life generally has a huge influence on attainment. And by bringing all the bits together we found we were making a more sustained difference to families and family aspiration, so things started to grow.”

The provision of speech therapy services is a good example of how this works in practice. Before making speech therapy available on site, families would often struggle to get their children to appointments and then end up having them cancelled. “This was frustrating because the school would have fought long and hard to get a referral in the first place.” By having a speech therapist co-located at the centre, the school is able to make sure appointments are kept. It also means children aren’t spending as much time out of school – half an hour as opposed to a whole morning or afternoon away from lessons, keeping disruption to learning at a minimum.

“What’s key,” says Emma “is engaging with families as early as possible and having all the services accessible on a one-stop site allows both the children’s centre and school to do this.”

And it gets results. By working alongside partners such as health visitors, doctors, police and involving families actively in identifying their needs and those of the wider community, the neediest are supported and additional help provided as quickly as possible

Support such as developing early communication and language skills with the very young. This is central to our narrowing the gap work,” says Emma “because we now have access to really good quality training for staff with an ‘expert professional’ as part of the team. Working with her allows the children’s centre staff to feel confident delivering programmes themselves such as Baby Babble, Toddler Talk, and Talk Time to children in school identified as needing additional support with communication and language development.

“What we also find is that by providing support ‘in situ’, it becomes embedded and is seen as the way we do things round here. This helps to make it sustainable in the long term.”

At Greenside, the governing body is responsible for both the school and children’s centre. Two of the governors sit on the children’s centre advisory board and report back to the governing body. The school/centre leadership structure consists of the headteacher supported by the deputy head leading the school curriculum and attainment and the children’s centre co-ordinator leading the children’s centre offer of multi-agency services. This governance framework has enabled Greenside to protect the core purpose of the school and the children’s centre, while allowing the headteacher, John, to focus on a wider community vision, bringing everything together, including growing partnerships to build resources to support the centre, such as a health centre and income-generating training rooms on site.

A vital element of leading an integrated model is about developing stakeholder and partner interest and engagement. And this can be challenging in terms of time and effort.

“It comes down to individual people, personalities, the give and take, the amount of trust you build up with someone,” says John. “A partnership can be with someone who initially doesn’t see any value in being a partner, but if it’s something you need for your children, you have to take it along the journey and play the long game.”

Partnerships are also constantly changing, requiring a willingness to be flexible and adaptive as new partners, for example, from the private, voluntary and independent sector, GP consortia and an increasingly diverse school system begin to emerge as new local providers.

Another aspect of this type of governance model is that although leadership comes from within the school initially – setting the vision and values – other community leaders are closely involved and encouraged to influence and shape direction and the setting of priorities.

“It’s not a question of wanting to be in charge of everything,” says John “you have to allow others to come in. You don’t have to be an expert in family services, for example as others contribute that expertise.”

However, sometimes this becomes a challenge as those using the services tend to think you are in charge. As John says, “you may find yourself dealing with a complaint about another service or professional. This requires sensitivity and diplomacy, treading carefully and demonstrating respect for professional boundaries.”

Economies of scale are an obvious benefit of integration, but these too are not without risks and challenges.

“Economics of scale,” says John “have been an important aspect of this integrated approach, particularly as budget pressures have increased. Although fundamental, they have also added to the complexity. We have ended up with a significant part of my role being associated with practical daily management issues such as securing additional revenue, finance support, caretaking and cleaning, and arranging jointly-funded posts. In the current climate however, everyone feels to be retreating back into their own professional silos so the economies of scale that have been achieved are more difficult to maintain and are under threat.

“We are finding the capacity of the local authority to support our work is becoming more and more stretched, particularly in areas such as data collection and analysis, buildings maintenance and management etc so we have to take the existing work we have developed and look for new ways of moving it forwards.”

I asked John what sort of leadership style he feels is required in this environment.

“The key is to be consistent about core purpose – not jumping from one idea to another. Be yourself and trust in the relationships that you have to develop. Spread the leadership around, give people the power to make decisions and go with it.

“It’s not a question of power; it’s a question of respect.”

For Emma, working in an integrated centre has brought many benefits. “The difference is the amount of support you can draw on. I’ve picked up and learned from John that it’s okay to take risks and to challenge more. Sharing an office allows us to develop ideas together and to do things differently.”

Despite the complexities of multi-agency working and the challenges ahead, getting the chance to work with children and families from 0-11 is an opportunity to really understand the local community and make differences together that endure over time. For John it is all about early intervention, community engagement and the creation of a living, flexible hub of services. “Initially, you might have to give more than you get, but longer term your children and your families will benefit”.

Published January 2012