Sure Start: where did it come from; where is it going?

This article describes the origin of the UK's Sure Start programme, an innovative early years' programme launched in 1998. The programme owed its beginnings to support from the UK Treasury that saw it as a vehicle for combating intergenerational deprivation. The programme has expanded rapidly in the past few years. This paper analyses how the programme has changed and in particular how some of its basic characteristics, such as the integrated working across disciplines, the involvement of parents and the stress on family support, seem likely to change. The dilemmas posed by spreading the funding more thinly are also examined. There is some danger that the features of the programme that made it so attractive to participants and workers will be lost in the rush to mainstream the programme, so that it may become a victim of its own success.