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Today we are launching Commissioning Children’s Centres: a rural perspective, a short guide focusing on families with young children in rural areas and the implications for Children’s Centre commissioning and delivery.

The Audit Commission describes commissioning as the process of specifying and monitoring services to meet people’s needs at a strategic level. The process of commissioning has been the subject of a wide range of guidance documents and practice case studies. This guide is intended for commissioners, providers and practitioners, to supplement the existing resources.

Sarah McAdam, our Chief Executive says, ‘The countryside offers many benefits for children but is also associated with particular problems and disadvantages, including distance, isolation and reduced access to services. Those disadvantages impact most significantly on the poorest families. The challenge for commissioners and providers is how best to adapt the children’s centre model to meet the needs of rural communities and to support those families most in need. ‘

This guide highlights:

• The necessity for effective outreach work and the fact that rural outreach is not only about taking services out to satellite venues or to people’s homes. It should be explicitly connected to community development, building the capacity of people in the local community and supporting community providers to develop their services.
• The need for a flexible approach. In rural areas, services may be non-existent or thinly spread. Services which are restrictive or highly compartmentalised are less likely to engage participation from local families.
• A transport or access strategy needs to be at the heart of children’s centre delivery plans, whether linking to community and volunteer driving schemes, or making use of minibuses and other mobile units.
• Good multi-agency working and data-sharing is a practical necessity in communities where services are thinly spread. The relationship with health is particularly pivotal as health visitors may be best placed to identify and alert children’s centre staff to isolated families in need.
• Under the plans of the Coalition Government, there will be more opportunities for community and voluntary organisations to be involved in running children’s centres. Social enterprise may be a model which is particularly suitable for the governance of rural children’s centres and there are already good practice exemplars on the ground.

Underlying all of the issues raised in the guide is the necessity to make rural need a priority. A quarter of children living in rural England are living in poverty but rural poverty exists alongside affluence and is often hidden from view. Poor families spend proportionately more of their incomes on food, housing and other basic necessities. Joseph Rowntree state that those people in the lowest income group in rural areas spend, on average, almost 50 per cent more than the same income groups living in urban areas. They are also more likely to lack transport.

We are all working towards achieving a fair and inclusive society where every child is given the best start in life and an equal opportunity to fulfil his or her potential. To ensure this happens it is vital that the issues highlighted in this document are addressed to ensure that the child in the countryside is not left behind and is given every opportunity to be part of their community and wider society.

Download ‘Commissioning Children’s Centres: a rural perspective’