The Start for Life programme offers a range of services to support parents from pregnancy until their baby is two years old, including birth registration, health visits, parenting courses, infant feeding, and speech and language support.
Family hubs aim to bring these services together to provide families with joined-up support.
The report was commissioned by the Government and is based on research visits to: Northumberland, Sunderland, County Durham, Hull, Torbay and the Isle of Wight.
While it finds most families have a positive experience of Start for Life services and highlights many examples of good practice, it also identifies areas for improvement.
It finds that those areas where existing infrastructure was already in place, such as children's centre buildings and existing Sure Start services, were able to provide Start for Life services more quickly.
The report recognises that the programme is still being embedded and local authorities are at different staring points, but highlights that some local areas need to rethink how they advertise the services on offer, as some parents believe family hubs are only for ‘troubled families’ and are not aware of the services available to them.
Families who accessed Start for Life services said they felt more confident in feeding their babies and had better perinatal mental health. They also felt that their children went on to achieve better outcomes. Across all local areas visited, there was a ‘consistent and ambitious vision’ to deliver joined-up services, the report says. Families were overwhelmingly positive about the benefit of this approach.
The report states that, ‘It was clear from our visits that local areas that had kept their Sure Start or children’s centre services were able to provide Start for Life services more quickly, by building on established infrastructure. However, despite the activities on offer, a large majority of families we spoke to did not always know what services and support were available to them through the family hubs.’
The report found that some aspects of the Start for Life programme were less well developed, for example in all the areas visited, parents said the postnatal Start for Life offer was more firmly established, with antenatal Start for Life services more often in their infancy.
Speech and language
To support the rise in children with speech and language delays since the pandemic, one local area identified that, despite this, it was receiving fewer referrals for speech and language support from early years settings. To remedy this, early years champions began to work with settings to help them carry out baseline assessments.
If they identified a potential delay, they enrolled parents and children on 'a language builder course'. These are designed to give parents and children the skills to practise and develop early language skills, helping parents support their children with better language development. It said this course has led to a significant reduction in the number of referrals to speech and language services.
The report notes, ‘This is an excellent example of where the right support can mitigate the need for specialist services for children beyond the age of two.’
In another local area, parents could access a range of parenting courses, such as Brilliant Babies and Early Talkers. These were all designed to upskill parents and give them the confidence to support their children’s learning at home. Parents attending these courses spoke of the new skills they had acquired.
The report said, ‘One parent told us that it had given her partner the confidence to read to their child at night’.
Other areas have offered early education nursery places for two-year-olds who are not eligible for funding, in order to close the education gap earlier.
Special Educational Needs and Disabilities
On access to services for children with special educational needs, the researchers said parents of babies with SEND told them that family hubs ‘were not always as inclusive of their needs and that some hubs were not accessible to families with wheelchairs. Services such as portage and other specialist support were not routinely available in hubs, and this remains an area for development recognised by the leaders involved in the review.’
Work around the home learning element of the programme for the under twos was less well developed in all areas.
The report says more support is needed to measure the impact of Start for Life services, including a set a of shared national outcomes, as many local areas find the current reporting requirements too time-intensive. Local authority leaders also outlined the challenges of short-term funding, which they feel prevents them from planning provision for longer periods of time.
Ofsted and the CQC have set out a number of recommendations to improve the delivery of Start for Life services, including:
- Ensure that the Start for Life programme is made available and promoted to all families nationally, to remove any stigma associated with accessing the services.
- The government should commit to a minimum level of long-term funding for the programme nationally, allowing local areas to establish services and build parents’ trust in Start for Life provision.
- Central and local government should establish a common set of national outcomes, with space for local areas to develop additional criteria to meet local need.
- Central government should review reporting requirements linked to funding, to reduce the administrative burden on local authorities.
- Central government should support local areas to develop joint recording systems to improve information-sharing.
- Central government should support the sector to ensure there are enough qualified, experienced health professionals working alongside Start for Life staff when they provide health advice.
Yvette Stanley, Ofsted’s national director of Regulation and Social Care, said, ‘The care and support a child receives in the first few years of their life helps them thrive throughout their childhood and beyond. Start for Life services offer families vital support to help every child get off to the best possible start.
‘I’m very pleased that many families have had a positive experience using these services. I hope this review helps local services continue to improve the support families receive in the first few years of their child’s life.’
Lucy Harte, deputy director for multiagency operations at CQC, said, ‘Local health care professionals, working alongside and with other services can make a real difference to the way that children and their families are supported and develop. Hearing from families about the value of support they have received is deeply encouraging and a testament to those caring people working in services – the challenge now is to learn from this.’
