Prevention: the take up and targeting of the Childrens Fund

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Prevention the take up and targeting of the
Childrens Fund

• Professor Ian Plewis
• Centre for Longitudinal Studies
• Institute of Education, University of London
  i.plewis_at_ioe.ac.uk

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There are several ways of characterising the
Childrens Fund.One way is as a means of
providing financial support for a range of
services/activities for children age five to
thirteen right across England with the choices
about the kinds of services to be supported made
at the local Partnership level.
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This leads us to the following questions

• How has the money been used?
• What kinds of changes did the Partnerships
  programme managers expect to bring about?
• What were the target groups for the services?
• Who used the services?
• What kinds of impacts, if any, did the services
  have on the children and their families?

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(No Transcript)
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• Looking at how these activity types were related
  by
• programme managers to the Childrens Fund
  sub-objectives we find
• The highest mean priority for nearly all of the
  20 activity types in terms of the Childrens Fund
  sub-objectives was health improvement.
• The exceptions were
• 1. educational support, additional language
  support and ICT where the priority was
  school attainment.
• 2. home-school partnerships where the priority
  was school attendance.

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The priority given to health improvement can be
explained by the emphasis given to raising
self-esteem which appeared to be categorised as a
health objective.
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• The evidence was collected between January and
  March 2004.
• In the summer of 2003 partnerships were asked to
  allocate 25 of their spend to services aimed at
  crime reduction.
• However, programme managers did not give clear
  priority to this sub-objective for any of the 20
  activities.

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• We know that local programmes were inventive in
  the ways they tackled what many saw as the
  distraction of the 25 requirement and it is
  possible that the focus on self-esteem reflected
  one way of attending to both crime prevention and
  becoming a victim of crime or anti-social
  behaviour.

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Distribution of services by target groups, shown
in the QMD for January March 2004.
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• What kinds of areas received area-based services?
• Families living in Childrens Fund wards faced
  more social and economic disadvantages than
  those living elsewhere in England.
• For example
• 20 were lone parent families compared with 13
  in non-Childrens Fund areas.
• 26 of mothers had no educational qualifications
  compared to 14 in non-Childrens Fund areas.

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• Nearly all of the Childrens Fund sample (96)was
  living in urban areas.
• 64 were white compared with 82 in
  non-Childrens Fund wards.

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• What kinds of primary schools provided a base for
  school-based services?
• Schools with a higher proportion of pupils
  receiving special provision are more likely to be
  a base for Childrens Fund services.
• Schools with a higher proportion of pupils whose
  first language was not English are more likely to
  be a base for Childrens Fund services.
• 3. There is no statistically significant relation
  between the proportions of ethnic groups in
  schools and whether they are a base for
  Childrens Fund services.

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• 4. As expected, LAs funded in wave one were more
  likely to have primary schools with services than
  LAs in wave two and, in turn, wave three LAs had
  the lowest proportion of schools with services.
• 5. The findings for free school meals are more
  complex. Schools with a higher proportion of
  pupils receiving free school meals are more
  likely to provide Childrens Fund services.
  However, this effect varies across LAs such that
  the relation with FSM is stronger in wave three
  LAs than it is in wave one and wave two LAs. In
  other words, wave three partnerships, with less
  money to spend, appeared to target more
  disadvantaged schools to a greater extent than
  wave one and wave two partnerships did.

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• 6. The provision of school-based Childrens Fund
  services varies across LAs.
• 7. The relation between service provision and the
  proportion of pupils receiving free school meals
  is much stronger in some LAs than in others. In
  other words, some LAs targeted disadvantaged
  schools more than others, regardless of which
  wave they were in.

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• What kinds of families and children used
  area-based services?
• We find use rises from about 7 for four and
  five-year-olds to between 9 and 10 for children
  aged six to 11,and then falls to between 6 and 7
  for 12 and 13-year-olds.
• 7 of 14-year-olds and 6.6 of 15-year-olds were
  reported to have used services in the 12 months
  prior to interview.

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• What kinds of families and children used
  area-based services?
• This suggests that Childrens Fund services are
  used by young people beyond the cut-off age of
  13 (and by children younger than five).
• We find no difference in use by boys and girls.

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Use (weighted ) of breakfast, homework and
after-school clubs by age of child, evidence from
MCSOS1
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Service use () by socio-demographic and
socio-economic variables, evidence from MCSOS1
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• Breakfast clubs are
• used more by children in single-parent families
• used less by children whose mothers have
  educational qualifications from overseas.
• used more by younger children if their mothers
  are employed, especially if they work longer
  hours.

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• Homework clubs are
• used more by children in single-parent families
• used more by children who have Pakistani/Banglades
  hi, Black/Black British or Indian background.
• used more by younger children whose mothers go
  out to work.

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• After-school clubs are
• used more by children with mothers with better
  educational qualifications
• used more by younger children whose mothers go
  out to work
• used more by children who live in more rural
  areas.

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• All-day use is greater among children
• in single-parent families whose mothers work
  full-time
• who do not have an Indian background
• living in households receiving benefits.
• And less among children
• whose mothers gained educational qualifications
  overseas.

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• Continuity of use
• We find that
• 28 of the non-users of Childrens Fund-like
  services in 2003 became users in 2004.
• However, 46 of those using one service in 2003
  and 29 of those using two services then were not
  using any service in 2004.

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• Clearly, there can be many reasons why families
  move
• in and out of service use
• their circumstances change,
• the service is no longer available,
• they no longer have any need for it,
• they were not satisfied with it in 2003,
• the service was designed only to run for a short
  period (e.g. holiday schemes) etc.
• If services are used only for relatively short
  periods then this might have implications for the
  impact of these services.

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• Learning Points
• The Childrens Fund was targeted at wards with
  more social and economic disadvantage than
  elsewhere in England.
• There is evidence that the Childrens Fund was
  reaching its target groups. Services were more
  likely to be used by children from larger
  families, from single-parent families, from homes
  that were rented and where means-tested benefits
  were received.

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• Learning Points
• Support from the Childrens Fund enabled a wide
  range of services to be provided for children
  aged five to 13 and their families. The dominant
  model of service in terms of numbers were clubs
  which included those provided immediately before
  and after school.

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• Learning Points
• Although targeted at five to 13-year-olds, our
  evidence indicates that Childrens Fund services
  were being used both by children aged four and
  also by young people of 14 and 15. The peak ages
  for use appeared to be between nine and 12.
  Certainly this is so for breakfast, homework and
  after-school clubs although there is some
  evidence that the less commonly used (and
  possibly less widely available) services such as
  education and health support, mentoring etc. are
  used more by families with no child under ten.

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• Learning Points
• A clear message from the analyses is that
  different services of the kind funded by the
  Childrens Fund were used by different groups of
  families and children. This comes out most
  strikingly in the separate analyses of data on
  use of breakfast, homework and after-school clubs
  (and also reinforces the importance of collecting
  disaggregated data about the use of such
  services).

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• Learning Points
• Breakfast clubs and homework clubs appear to have
  been used by the more disadvantaged groups
  whereas after-school clubs were used more by
  primary school-age children from better-off
  families with a well-educated mother who is
  working full-time.

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• Learning Points
• There were differences between minority ethnic
  groups in their use of services. Children from
  Black/Black British backgrounds were generally
  most likely to use breakfast, homework and
  after-school clubs. Children from an Indian
  background and children whose mothers gained
  educational qualifications from overseas were
  least likely to use breakfast clubs, white
  children were least likely and Pakistani/Banglades
  hi children most likely to use homework clubs.

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• Learning Points
• We cannot be sure that these differences are not
  due to differential provision in different sorts
  of areas although the balance of the evidence
  suggests that this is not the whole explanation.

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• Recommendations
• All the targets set for the Childrens Fund were
  expressed in terms of outcomes, for example,
  improved school attainments and attendance. For
  any future initiatives of this kind, it might be
  worth also considering targets for use, based on
  the numbers of children deemed likely to benefit
  from such services at the local level. Targets
  for service use would, however, require access to
  much better data than are currently available.

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• Recommendations
• Funds directed at breakfast and homework clubs
  could help to reduce social exclusion, although
  whether they actually do is a question about the
  impact of such services on outcomes such as
  school attainment and answers to this question
  require further data. Support for after-school
  clubs might, however, be less effective because
  any gains in terms of improved outcomes for
  children could go as much or more to children in
  advantaged circumstances than to children in
  poverty.

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• Recommendations
• On the other hand, just because after-school
  clubs are used more by families in more
  advantaged circumstances does not necessarily
  imply that they cannot reduce social exclusion.
  Again this is an empirical question requiring
  more data.