The Local Context Analysis (LCA) team of the National Evaluation of Sure Start (NESS) had two main tasks, the first of which was discussed in Chapter Two and involved describing the areas in which Sure Start Local Programmes (SSLPs) were situated. The second task, the results of which are summarised in this chapter, was to document change over time in SSLP neighbourhoods, based on the boundaries originally specified when SSLPs were first implemented, between 1999 and 2002.1 This task was considered of great importance because extent of change over time might reflect a community-level impact of SSLPs, although it is not possible to attribute all, or even any, changes specifically to the presence of SSLPs – for two reasons. First, other area-based interventions (ABIs) were implemented in some portion of the majority of the first 260 SSLP areas being studied by NESS (see Chapter Three), making it impossible to attribute any change detected to SSLPs per se, rather than to overlapping initiatives, or to interactions between initiatives. Second, because no area-based data were gathered on truly suitable comparison areas that did not have SSLPs, and especially because NESS was never able to operate within the framework of a randomised controlled trial in which comparable areas were randomly assigned to SSLP or control treatments, it is impossible to draw strong inferences regarding any impacts of SSLPs on community characteristics (see Chapters One, Four and Eight). Documenting the extent of change in SSLP areas nevertheless provides important contextual information about SSLPs, information that has been integrated into the analysis of the impact of SSLPs on children and families (see Chapter Eight and Nine) and their cost effectiveness (see Chapter Seven).

In an effort to gain some insight into the potential meaning, impact-wise, of the changes that transpired within SSLP areas, data collected at the neighbourhood level by the NESS LCA team were also gathered for all of England so that the latter could function as a kind of benchmark on which change in SSLP areas could be compared. Such comparisons are presented in this chapter. Indeed, three core questions are addressed: (1) Between the fiscal years 2000/01 and 2004/05, did SSLP areas change in neighbourhood characteristics? (2) How did any such changes in SSLP areas compare with those occurring across all of England? (3) Among SSLP areas, what factors were associated with more or less change in neighbourhood characteristics?