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Critical Social Policy, Vol. 26, No. 4, 699-721 (2006)
DOI: 10.1177/0261018306068470

Childhood, parenting and early intervention: A critical examination of the Sure Start national programme

Karen Clarke

University of Manchester

The Sure Start programme is central to New Labour’s long-term strategy for preventing social exclusion. Its focus on young children and early intervention epitomizes a social investment approach to social policy and reflects a social integrationist understanding of social inclusion that identifies individual opportunity in the labour market as the means for achieving inclusion, and educational achievement as its basis. Evidence on which Sure Start is based has been used by the government to support a primarily individual and instrumental approach to combating social exclusion. Complex research evidence is transformed into a set of target outcomes for Sure Start resulting in a policy that at national level promotes a view of mothers as principally responsible for children’s development and well-being, and risks sliding into a moral discourse of social exclusion that blames parents for poor outcomes.

Key Words: children • mothers • social exclusion • social investment • targets


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