Gabriella Jóźwiak - Freelance Journalist

"In Ofsted's most recent children's centre inspection results, less than half achieved a good or outstanding grade. From April to June 2014 it inspected 89 centres, of which only 3 per cent achieved an overall outstanding, and 45 per cent were good. A further 42 per cent were judged as requires improvement, and 10 per cent were inadequate.  The results for the centres, which offer support services to families with children under five in local communities, continue a declining trend since 2010 when Government funding for this provision was pooled with other early intervention funding streams. Then, the resultant Early Intervention Grant was worth about £3bn in today's prices, according to the Children's Society. In 2015, the value of the grant shared between local authorities will have halved to about £1.5bn. The latest results represent only a small proportion of some 3,300 children's centres in England (an actual total is unclear because of 'cl...

My investigation into how children's play services have been affected by central government cuts to local authority budgets, revealed nearly a third have removed some staffed and unstaffed play provision since 2010. The findings of my freedom of information request provided the first concrete data to backup anecdotal evidence that children's play has suffered drastically under the current government. You can read the article in full on the Children & Young People Now website (subscription only). Play expert Tim Gill wrote this blog about the results.