ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the history, development and decline of children's centres as a universal service and examines how children's centres are socially constructed and how they are viewed by the stakeholders. It outlines how the children's centre mode of operation changed from a core offer to a core purpose, due to policy change, and the impact it had on families and the community. The chapter proposes what the 'real' future potentially looks like for the families and communities of children's centres. in 2013, Royston and Rodrigues suggest that children's centres were working as part of 'a broad safety net' of services for families. The emerging problem was that this safety net was disappearing. Children's centre teachers, for example, were typically part of the senior leadership team planning the direction of the educational strategies that centres provided. A government's investment in early prevention or more currently early intervention programmes such as children's centres can be effective in financial terms.
