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.

The role of ‘embeddedness’ in the delivery of integrated children's services

“…Practitioners from several Centres described being involved in local events for example running a stall at a local community fete, running school holiday Play Days in local parks or making links with local church and other community provided toddler groups. Taking services outside of the Centre buildings may also mitigate against individual reactions to the material space within which parenting and family support services are usually delivered, and which may hold particular emotional reactions for some families (Jupp, 2013). Being embedded in the local community meant that local people might hear about the Centre through a variety of different avenues and might therefore be more willing to access services if, as one practitioner said, 'people see you and they know your face' (9).…”

“…Several reports considered how SSLPs maximised access to services for children and families (Garbers, Tunstill, Allnock, & Akhurst, 2006). Often Centres used creative and innovative approaches to engage families including targeted publicity; the identification of individual families with partner agencies and outreach strategies that addressed identified physical and emotional obstacles to access (Jupp, 2013;D. L. Watson, Aghtaie, & Turney, 2012).…”

Food, feeding and the material everyday geographies of infants: possibilities and potentials

“…It is intriguing to consider how different foodstuffs are viewed as more or less desirable, affordable, or appropriate for infants. These differences might be tied to specific gendered moral geographies (see Aitken, 2000;Duncan & Smith, 2002;Duncan, 2005Foy-Phillips & Lloyd-Evans, 2011Holloway, 1998;McDowell, Ray, Perrons, Fagan, & Ward, 2006;McDowell, 2006McDowell, , 2008 or 'caringscapes' (S. Bowlby, 2012; see also Jupp, 2013). Bourdieu's concept of habitus usefully helps to conceive how 'external realities' forge and create bodies (see for instance, Bourdieu, 1984;Bourdieu & Thompson, 1991; see also Holt, 2006;McDowell, 2006McDowell, , 2008Reay, 2004).…”

Alter-Childhoods: Biopolitics and Childhoods in Alternative Education Spaces

“…I exemplify and offer a conceptual language for a social group (children) only cursorily acknowledged in theorizing on biopolitical alternatives, which is more commonly concerned 10 with gendered, raced or sexualized differences (e.g., Hardt and Negri 2009;Braidotti 2011;Ruglis 2011 therefore offer the following analyses as one way in to questions of alter-childhoods. (Ferguson and Seddon 2007) and Canada (Quirke 2009 Second, a move to view education (and childhood interventions) as "investment in human capital", set within the familiar neoliberal tropes of (inter)national competitive advantage, flexible skilling, individualization, and responsiblization of both children and parents (Mizen 2003, 455;Katz 2008;Jupp 2013). Third, related tussles over the UK's National Curricula 3 , which at the time of writing centered around the reintroduction of written examinations, the skills and subject areas that should be core to a child's education, and the relative autonomy accorded to a school or individual teacher.…”