Family hubs expansion: sector split on their role and potential
Derren Hayes
Tuesday, November 30, 2021
Advocates of family hubs say new government funding will help establish a network of family support facilities that complements the early years focus of children’s centres, but some fear it signals the "death knell" for them.
At the Spending Review, the government announced £82m to establish family hubs in 75 local authorities over the next three years. The funding is in addition to the £34m announced earlier to set up hubs in 12 pilot areas, create a national centre to co-ordinate practice and develop approaches to digital support.
Hubs that provide a wide range of services for parents and older children – as opposed to the 0-5 focus offered by children’s centres – are not a new concept: some councils have already moved to a hub model in response to deep cuts to early help budgets since 2010.
New direction
Successive ministers have continued to pledge their support for children’s centres. However, the new funding and backing of proposals for a hub in every community in Andrea Leadsom MP’s recent review of early child health, suggest a new direction. This was confirmed by children’s minister Will Quince when he told the public services committee that it is his “ambition” for all councils move to the family hubs model.
At the November hearing, Quince explained that the funding is to help local authorities with the “change process”. “It’s not about us investing in new buildings, it’s about designing a hubs model in their area,” he said. “The funding is all about allowing them to go through the change process and incorporating existing children’s services and other services into a one-stop shop.”
Early years providers and local authorities are questioning what this means for the more than 2,500 children’s centres still being operated by councils. Here, four experts outline contrasting visions for what the future holds.
BUILDING ON CENTRES’ LEGACY
By Dr Samantha Callan, co-founder and director, Family Hubs Network
Almost 15 years ago, the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) think-tank pioneered the concept of a national network of family hubs.
These are easily accessible places in local communities which provide families with children and young people aged 0-19 (up to 25 if there are special educational needs and disabilities) early help to overcome difficulties and build stronger relationships. They facilitate integrated working, deliver better outcomes for families, enable more effective service delivery, and smarter use of budgets. Parenting support and help to reduce parental conflict are crucial to their offer which also, ideally, works with the family courts to help separated parents co-parent effectively.
We should not take for granted what was achieved by Labour’s Sure Start Children’s Centre programme which established more than 3,500 community-based early years service points where new parents received valuable support, health care and advice. They made a significant difference to outcomes for many families and children.
Many of them recognised they had to help parents build skills and confidence not just as mums and dads but also as prospective or actual employees and housing tenants. They provided employment, debt and housing advice in the knowledge that “child poverty” has to be tackled by addressing the multiple reasons families struggle financially, which are not solely linked to income.
However, the central government funding package more or less required them to offer early years services – budgets were very prescriptively sliced up and ringfenced so there was very little room for exceeding the Sure Start specification. Couple support, for example, was rarely offered and had to be paid for out of additional funds which were hard to secure and often dried up after pilots were completed.
Evidence from the CSJ has made it clear that experiencing safe, stable and nurturing relationships throughout childhood, not just whilst a baby, is necessary to thrive. The CSJ has also highlighted the lack of integration of the various family support services in local authority areas, despite many reports calling for them to be better joined-up.
Key to that integration is the involvement of the voluntary and community sector – which means not just formal organisations but also community members. There were occasional good examples of children’s centres drawing in the voluntary sector and community volunteers, but many were silos of excellent help for the new parents who managed to find their way through their doors. Outreach was and remains a challenge, and the voluntary and community sector can help in identifying those in need and, as trusted intermediaries, help them engage.
However good children’s centres are, they are not sufficient in family help systems. That is why Andrea Leadsom emphasises the need to draw children’s centres into the local family hubs network of connected buildings, services and virtual help.
Hubs are not just rebadged Sure Start but they build on its legacy. They extend its founding vision of good-quality family help, including couple relationship support, to ensure it is accessible to families not just in the early years but throughout childhood, and delivered in a relational and integrated manner. It’s a policy all political parties can get behind.
HUBS OFFER VITAL LIFELINE BUT MORE FLEXIBILITY NEEDED
By Imran Hussain, director of policy and campaigns, Action for Children
Family hubs are a vital lifeline in the communities in which Action for Children’s 72 children’s centres and hubs are based. Both provide a space for parents, carers and children to develop, bond and get crucial support.
Andrea Leadsom’s review called for every child to be able to access a family hub in their local area.
The £82m announced in the Spending Review is a welcome statement of intent but delivering the government’s ambitions will require a lot more investment.
For children to have the best start in life, hubs must offer universal services to meet the needs of both the parent and child. Our research finds that too many parents struggle to access services like baby groups, parenting support and health services. These are essential for supporting development and wellbeing as well as identifying issues facing families before they reach crisis point.
Hubs should have a flexible approach to delivery. The use of community venues, such as libraries and leisure centres, can make services more accessible to families, particularly in rural areas.
Providing services online can also widen access to those who need it – one of our successes through the pandemic has been the growth of our free online Parent Talk support service.
It’s good news that ministers are saying family hubs are a priority. The challenge is to provide the plan and resources to allow councils and charities to make this a reality for parents and children.
INVESTMENT UNLIKELY TO SOLVE RISE IN FAMILY POVERTY
By Janet Boddy, professor of child, youth and family studies, University of Sussex
At the height of the Sure Start programme, there were more than 3,600 children’s centres. The idea was to have a service in every community, within pram-pushing distance.
Children’s centres were open to all but targeted in terms of location with 54 per cent in the 30 per cent most deprived areas of the country.
Sure Start was effective: benefits from involvement grow over time, with significant savings to the NHS.
Since 2010, there have been successive waves of cuts to local authority budgets, hitting hardest in the most deprived local authorities. Research for the Sutton Trust highlighted the impact on services for children and families. Local authority funding for early intervention fell 64 per cent by 2018, with 1,000 children’s centres closed and the remainder “at tipping point” offering a significantly reduced number and range of services.
Since 2017, child destitution has increased by 52 per cent, with evidence that family poverty and neighbourhood deprivation increase children’s risk of abuse and neglect.
What exactly is the problem that children and families minister Will Quince is seeking to fix? There is a critical intersection between cuts to universal public services and the underlying issue of child and family poverty. This cannot be addressed by simply re-imagining children’s centres as family hubs.
The planned investment is very little, very late – and many significant gaps remain. On their own, and as constructed currently, the planned family hubs are not likely to solve the problems faced by children and families.
IGNORING LESSONS OF THE PAST IS A HUGE OVERSIGHT
By James Hempsall, director, Hempsall’s Consultancy and trustee of charity Children’s Centres Leader
Here we go again. A new model seeking to address the all too familiar needs, issues and barriers for families, attaching an associated national brand in the process.
I will never criticise anyone wanting to do the best for children and families. Effecting vital and impactful support, at such a critical time, is an essential, not desirable, part of the welfare state. But fail to learn the lessons of previous experiences and we will all have something to moan about.
I am hearing many times that implementing family hubs is not factoring in what has happened before. This is a huge oversight and an expensive error. Those who reminisce about Sure Start and children’s centres are not regressive – there is invaluable experience here, and hubs can benefit from it.
Sadly, children’s centres have been petering out for almost 10 years, by virtue of austerity funding and a lack of national strategy. I fear hubs are the death knell for children’s centres, in the same way they ran roughshod over Sure Start. We didn’t take enough care and attention to address the pros and cons of Sure Start; instead, everyone got too excited wanting shiny new children’s centres everywhere. This could happen again with hubs if we are not careful.
What’s important is that all models of delivery reach and engage families, in the long-term, and that they are stigma-free and multi-generational. Which happen to be some of the founding principles of Sure Start.