Enacting parenting policy? The hybrid spaces of Sure Start Children's Centres

Abstract

This article draws on research in three UK Sure Start Children's Centres which explored them as particular kinds of spaces, with the intention of understanding how policy imperatives and discourses interact with other dynamics. The role of the material spaces of the buildings, of ambivalent interactions of users with staff, and friendship groups among users are seen as key to understanding the centre as a ‘hybrid’ space in which policy intentions were exceeded by other aspects of everyday life. This has implications not only for understanding policy programmes in action, but also for how academic analysis and theory positions itself in relation to these spaces.

Keywords:

• Sure Start
• parenting policy
• hybridity
• friendship

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to the research participants for their time. Thanks are also due to Janet Newman, Aisling Gallagher, two anonymous referees, and Peter Kraftl for comments at different stages.

Notes

As this section makes clear, the shifting policy programmes and nomenclature of these centres is slightly complex, and different centres have named themselves in different ways. For the purposes of this article, the term ‘Children's Centres’ is generally used but it should be understood that not all such centres would use this term themselves.