Reports on a study into outreach services offered by Sure Start Children's Centres to engage and support disadvantaged children and families. Key aims were to discover whether outreach was successful in reaching the most disadvantaged, to discover a definition of best practice and to highlight the relevant skills, qualifications and experience for good outreach.
The report includes details of the research design and methodology and findings from a literature review. Research findings are discussed in areas of: perspectives on outreach; Sure Start Children's Centres and extended services; multi-agency working; best practice definitions of outreach; and parents characteristics and perceptions.
It concludes that overall the children's centres are reaching families in priority categories. Systems for expressing outcomes or robust links with the Every Child Matters Framework or wider poverty reduction are less well-developed. Appendices include: pre-visit questionnaire for children's centres; pre-visit questionnaire for extended services.