Sure Start: Research into Practice; Practice into Research.

Sure Start is a major Government initiative whose main aim is to ensure that children living in poverty start school ready to flourish. It was setup as a result of that part of the Government's 1998 Comprehensive Spending Review, which focused on services for young children. Sure Start is a large and ambitious program, with an initial three-year budget of 450 million pounds for Great Britain. Sure Start is an area-based initiative. That is, districts are chosen for Sure Start based on indicators of deprivation, and then within each of those districts a local partnership is formed to decide the actual catchment area for the program, usually including around 750 children under the age of four. The planning process for local Sure Start program is based on nationally established objectives and targets set out in the Sure Start Public Service Agreement. The targets are a mix of outcome measures incidence of low birth weight, improvements in language development, reduction in re-registration on child protection registers and input measures visiting every family, strategy for dealing with post-natal depression, availability of high-quality play and early learning opportunities.