Sure Start director says childcare reform is for UK economy not children

Naomi Eisenstadt, first programme lead, says there is lack of attention on what childcare is actually for

Naomi Eisenstadt remembers her excitement as she started as the first director of the government’s Sure Start unit in 1999.

“I felt like Lyndon Johnson had run up and asked me to set up Head Start,” she says, referring to the US president’s key 1965 policy to fight the “war on poverty”.