Sure Start Local Programmes (SSLPs) were intended to break the intergenerational transmission of poverty, school failure and social exclusion by enhancing the life chances for children less than four years of age growing up in disadvantaged neighbourhoods. More importantly, they were intended to do so in a manner rather different from almost any other intervention undertaken in the western world. What made them so different was their area-based nature, with all children under four and their families living in a prescribed deprived area serving as the ‘targets’ of intervention. This resulted in the need for a distinct approach to evaluation, one focused on sampling from all children under four and their families residing in SSLP areas rather than exclusively on children and families using specific SSLP services. This intention-to-treat design, the results of which are presented in this chapter, is very different from those employed in evaluations of more narrowly focused early interventions that assessed the functioning of only children/families known to use the centre- and/or home-based services provided.

An intention-to-treat design was required because SSLPs were designed on the premise that an area-based intervention would have both direct and indirect effects on children. Direct effects derive from services used by children, such as good-quality childcare or speech therapy. Indirect effects in the case of SSLPs come in two varieties, one mediated through parents and parenting and the other via the community. The latter, in particular, necessitated a research design in which all children in the community, irrespective of personal exposure to Sure Start services, were sampled for purposes of evaluating the impact of SSLPs. Indirect effects mediated by parents or parenting are ones that are considered to have an impact on the child by affecting the child's parent or parenting. For example, family support that seeks to prevent or reduce post-partum maternal depression can indirectly affect the child if it affects a mother's psychological well-being and, thereby, her parenting. Efforts to encourage non-punitive approaches to discipline can also indirectly affect the child.

But indirect effects can also be mediated via the community. Indeed, SSLPs, it will be recalled, placed great emphasis on community development (see Chapter One), based on the view that more cohesive communities would support families and benefit children.