From Sure Start to Children’s Centres: capturing the erosion of social capital

Abstract

Discourses within the UK Labour government’s welfare policy agenda have consistently featured a reformulation of programmatic governance away from both centralised hierarchies and neo‐liberal markets to a social policy strategy that highlights a commitment to inclusive partnership working. Significantly, this process of meaningful social engagement and empowerment is intended to be facilitated and sustained through the building and deployment of social capital. This article reports data from a three‐year ethnographic study into the experiences of parents and professionals involved with the implementation of a Sure Start multi‐agency health and education early years programme driven by these policy imperatives. Significantly, whereas previously published research from this study revealed the building of social capital, the findings presented in this article suggest with the policy shift to Children’s Centres the social capital engendered to be in danger of erosion. In the concluding discussion, the article highlights the shifting dimensions of power at national, local and team levels informing this process of erosion, to suggest that social capital may be destroyed much more readily than it can be built.

Keywords:

• social capital
• governance
• multi‐agency
• early years
• Sure Start

Notes

1. While for the purposes of this article it is important to acknowledge some of the key conceptual and political issues associated with social capital, it is not its intent to provide a detailed review of the literature (see ONS 2001).

2. Mazebrook as a district is one of the most deprived in the country. The total number of children under four years in Mazebrook at the time of the study was 865.

3. The findings relate to data from observation and interviews with team members. The data from parental interviews did not suggest their awareness at the time of the research of the internal problems being experienced by the team.

4. This article takes the nation/local level to encompass national government policy priorities.

5. As the research period did not allow time for the observation of any subsequent impact on parents in relation to the working practices of the team, this article focuses only upon the observed changing relationships within the inter‐agency team.