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Many families already receive support in the crucial early years of children's lives through Sure Start children's centres, which provide early education integrated with health and family support services, and childcare from 8:00am to 6:00pm. The combination of services that centres provide for young children and families contributes to the Every Child Matters (ECM) outcomes by:

• improving health outcomes for children and families
• reducing crime rates
• reducing child poverty
• enabling parents to study and work
• helping lone parents to access work and training opportunities.

The centres also contribute to the strategic objectives of the Every Child Matters: Change for Children programme. LAs lead in planning and implementing centres, which allow services to be joined up through partnership working between statutory and voluntary agencies. This brings benefits in improved planning and commissioning of services to make the best use of resources.

The children's centre network is being expanded, and there will be up to 3500 across the country by 2010. Centres will be established to serve all of the most disadvantaged areas with links to local childminder networks and Jobcentre Plus. The Ten-Year Strategy for Childcare recommends that more co-located and accessible services be set up, and children's trusts given the ability to develop children's centres in response to local demand outside areas of priority Government funding.

Children's centres are models of integrated service provision, where primary care trusts, LAs, Jobcentre Plus, education and childcare providers, social services, and community and voluntary agencies work together to deliver seamless holistic services. Governance arrangements vary between centres, but all are managed through partnerships that reflect local need and diversity and represent all agencies involved in delivery as well as the users of services themselves.

 For more information, visit the Sure Start Children's Centres pages.