The Government’s family hubs, outlined in its 2019 manifesto, are centres which provide integrated family services for children and young people from birth to 19 years of age.
Andrea Leadsom’s long-awaited Early Years Healthy Development Review in March claimed that a ‘significant number’ of local areas only offered additional family services on a ‘targeted basis in response to need’, while family hubs would plug this gap by acting as ‘places for families to access services such as breastfeeding, mental health, intensive parenting support, smoking cessation, childcare and healthcare, as well as advice on jobs and training’.
According to the Social Mobility Commission, there are around 150 family hubs across England, the majority of which are operated by local authorities, although some are run on their behalf by voluntary groups. Local authorities are now being encouraged to set up family hubs more widely by March 2024 using a £12 million Transformation Fund, while £82 million will be given to 75 local authorities to set up new hubs.
A FRONT DOOR TO FAMILIES
The National Centre for Family Hubs (see More information), led by the Anna Freud Centre, is funded by the Department for Education to provide expert advice and guidance and work with local authorities to champion the approach.
Julia Mayes, programme manager of the National Centre, explains, ‘The fragmented nature of current provision leaves families vulnerable to “falling through the gaps”, particularly when accessing support during transitional periods, such as moving from perinatal support services to early years support.
‘An integrated model of family support that improves join-up between organisations can provide a consistent, public-facing point for access, assessment and navigation of family support services. Improved relationships with voluntary and community services and grassroots institutions will enable a much wider range of initial contact points, improving the ability of all families to access services.
‘Family hubs will provide a universal “front door” to families, offering a one-stop shop of services across social care, education, mental health and physical health, with a comprehensive Start for Life offer for parents and babies at its core.’
Hubs will provide core services across the areas of midwifery, health visiting, mental health support and infant feeding advice with specialist breastfeeding support.
Additional services will be provided based on local need, and available through a mixture of face-to-face and online provision.
SUPPORT FOR SET-UP
The National Centre has created an Implementation Toolkit with the aim of helping local authorities and providers to set up their hubs.
‘The challenges of setting up family hubs will vary depending on the local context,’ says Mayes. ‘We are keen to learn both about what is going well, and the barriers to implementation.’
A new learning network, Family Hubs in Mind, is free to join and offers learning events to support members as they set up family hubs in their local area and opportunities to connect with and learn from others who are doing the same.
Other learning events run by the centre will target services across a number of areas. ‘We are really keen that our audience is as broad as possible, as family hubs will cover a potentially vast number of service areas,’ Mayes adds. ‘We want to engage with all of those involved in the delivery of services to a family hub, and we’re really keen to think about how we bring them together, to find out more about what their counterparts are doing and problem solve together across, for example, maternity services and people working in the local authority itself.
‘We’re really evolving this programme as we go. Each time we run an event, we poll those involved about what they would like to see next.’
CASE STUDY: Portman Church Street Family Hub in Westminster, London
Portman Church Street started life as one of the capital’s first Children’s Centres in 2000. Located in one of the most disadvantaged wards in the country, the setting was well placed to identify and support families who needed its services the most, and became a fully fledged family hub in September 2021.
Peter Watt, deputy head, explains, ‘Children’s Centres are a really good fit for a family hub, because we’ve been bringing partners together around families for a long time. Our mission was always essentially to reach out into the community, find families that needed the most help, and support them. For the under-fives, that’s been our bread and butter for the last 20 years. The challenge is that now, we suddenly go from birth to 19.’
The hub provides a ‘core offer’ of services, offers a home to 35 different organisations and has connections with another 20. These include Citizens Advice Bureau, Mind, social workers, health visitors and charities.
‘It’s about connecting partners close to where families actually are,’ says Watt. ‘Families come to us anyway, through the nursery and drop-in sessions like stay-and-play, so there’s a churn of people into the building. That means they can then find out about and access other services too. We’re a one-stop shop.’
One of the biggest challenges is co-ordinating all these different stakeholders, so alongside monthly meetings and an integrated leadership team with a wide variety of partner representatives, Portman has created a ‘family navigator’ role. This is a staff member who pulls together the network of professionals best placed to help each family.
In terms of tackling a larger age range, Mr Watt believes a more long-term, holistic approach can benefit families.
‘The family hub model really supports transitions, like from nursery to primary school or from primary to secondary. There’s more of a focus on families being supported throughout their lives rather than just until a certain age, when everything drops off. The ideal is to provide some continuity, then families can drop in and drop out of support and there is some element of choice and agency.’
The hub offers a mixture of face-to-face and online services, and Watt is keen to emphasise the importance of this hybrid model.
‘Obviously the pandemic exposed existing inequalities, and many services found their referral rates went up,’ he says. ‘Now they are returning to face-to-face working, they are retaining a virtual approach to help more families. But there are always going to be families who need face-to-face contact. You can’t always expect a family to appear and offload everything that’s going on. As a nursery school, we learned over the years that you have to give parents time, and invest in relationships in order to make meaningful change. Trust is everything.’
Watt says early intervention is still vital. ‘We know, for example, that the youth offending system is packed with young people with undiagnosed learning needs, who might have had slightly different paths if their needs had been picked up earlier. The obvious thing is to focus completely on the early years, and I would argue that is still a really good place to start. However, difficult situations happen at all ages, and to all families at all times in their lives. Something might not become obvious until a child is nine, or a family might face crisis when children are teenagers. There has to be a responsive element to all of this.
‘It sounds obvious, but the earlier we can get involved and support families with difficulties, the better that is for children in the long term.’
MORE INFORMATION
- National Centre for Family Hubs: https://www.nationalcentreforfamilyhubs.org.uk