Family Hubs scheme receives £20m boost
Fiona Simpson
Thursday, August 19, 2021
The government has pledged £20m for support services for vulnerable families.
The funding will be used to help local authorities create Family Hubs in 10 areas across the country, the Department for Education has said.
Family Hubs, championed in Andrea Leadsom’s government-commissioned report Best Start for Life: A Vision for the 1,001 Critical Days, are designed to provide both in-person and online services including early education and childcare, mental health support, meetings with health visitors and parenting classes, counselling and advice for victims of domestic abuse.
The new round of funding comes from the Treasury’s Shared Outcomes Fund.
It includes £10m for the Family Hubs Transformation Fund, which will support local authorities to open family hubs in 10 new areas of England.
The other £10m is set to be used to expand the Growing Up Well digital project, designed to improve how information is shared between professionals working with families and children using Family Hubs.
Children and families minister Vicky Ford said: “It is absolutely vital that all families across England have access to the same high-quality services in their local communities, no matter where they live.
“That is why we are championing Family Hubs, and this additional £20m investment will drive forward this programme, helping to grow and expand hubs across the country so that even more parents and children can access the early health and education services we know can have a lifelong positive impact.”
However, the Labour Party said the announcement “rings hollow”, accusing ministers of “dismantling” the Sure Start scheme.
Tulip Siddiq, Labour’s shadow minister for children and early years, said: “If Conservative ministers really believed in community hubs to support young children and families, they wouldn’t have spent the last decade dismantling the Sure Start programme which delivered this support.
“This supposed commitment rings hollow after 11 years of cuts have forced the closure of over a thousand children’s centres. The Conservatives have taken an axe to the services the last Labour government built to give children the best start in life and they can’t be trusted to rebuild them.”