The impact of Sure Start on health and social care

Overview

This research, conducted between 2024 and 2025 measured the impact of Sure Start on a number of factors relating to the health and children’s social services involvement of infants and mothers living in the most deprived areas of Northern Ireland. Using administrative data, we also scoped the potential to look at impact throughout a child’s life.

Being born into poverty is associated with educational and health disadvantages from infancy through to adulthood and incurs a considerable expense to the public purse. Early years interventions — such as Sure Start — have tremendous potential to address the causes of educational and health inequalities in later life. However, it has always been challenging to prove the impact of these interventions robustly. Our project took advantage of a natural experiment that occurred when the Department of Education expanded Sure Start to new areas between 2006 – 2010, 2013 – 2017 and 2021.

Using administrative data on every child born in Northern Ireland, our research aims were to measure the impact of Sure Start on:

• Maternal and child health in the first 60 months of life
• Use of services and identification of developmental delays in children
• Early parenting behaviours

Activities and Methods

Our team:

• Measured the impact of Sure Start on the families living in Sure Start areas using linked administrative data to create a birth cohort composed of thousands of infants.     
• Listened to parents, carers and staff in three Sure Start centres in different areas of Northern Ireland to gain insights into the most important measures to analyse and to understand more about how Sure Start is delivered and experienced. The former Children’s Commissioner for Northern Ireland, Koulla Yiasouma, facilitated these sessions with a member of our team.
• Addressed a critical evidence gap regarding Sure Start and its benefits.

Dissemination of our findings in peer-reviewed journals and outside of academia is ongoing. All outputs will be posted on this website. 

We have worked with the National Children’s Bureau to disseminate our findings outside academia. In October 2025 we held an event in Belfast with around 100 policy-makers and practitioners to share our findings and gain insights into why some outcomes appeared stronger than others (see the policy briefing on this page).

Findings