Sure Start could have changed everything for my family. Labour must be brave – and revitalise it | Terri White

Gordon Brown, the then-Labour chancellor who introduced Sure Start in 1998, helped retrieve my eyeballs from the bit of my skull I’d rolled them into, with his analysis: “These results tell us in detail what most parents already know.

If you want proof alongside the assumptions of common sense I’ve made, studies have consistently shown the benefits of Sure Start (which was launched on the backs of proven initiatives in other countries) for years.

Prevention and support for my mum, and for me – the exact people New Labour had in mind when it dreamed up Sure Start in response to poverty and inequalities in health and education – could have been part of a solution for our family.

There is a space of ambient white noise that hums between what this pre-power Labour party says it wants – “reducing child poverty”, “expanding opportunity”, “the healthiest and happiest generation ever” – and what it has confirmed it will do.

What those on the frontline of services appear to largely agree on is the need for a cross-government commitment to local infrastructure, an initiative that’s prevention-based, community-informed, that recognises the complex needs of families and that children’s health and cognitive and social development are intertwined.

His rallying cry for “well-thought-out plans for helping parents to contribute this life-spring to the community” for “the care of the young and the establishment of sound hygienic conditions of motherhood”.