Overview of Best Start Family Hubs and family help services

This module explains how family hubs can be the vehicle to deliver an integrated family help offer to local communities through a strengthened and more connected universal and targeted offer for families. It also outlines some of the existing evidence for integrated ‘hub’ models and the impact they can have on families, as well as some of the known benefits for families from a system-wide, integrated, whole-family approach to family support. As well as being founded on research evidence, it is crucial that the family hub model is rooted in family experience and local practice. 

Family hubs are a place-based way of joining up locally in the planning and delivery of family help services. They bring services together to improve access, improve the connections between families, professionals, services, and providers, and put relationships at the heart of family support. Family hubs offer support to families from conception to 0-19 or up to 25 for those with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), with a great Start for Life offer at their core. 

This enables all the strands of government family help policy – Best Start Family Hubs, Young Futures, Families First – to be integrated and linked with a family hubs approach. 

Put simply, family help is about identifying needs within families early and providing coordinated support along a continuum. Families should experience a more joined up offer of support whether this is by going to their physical family hub, through outreach as a part of the family hub offer or accessing family help through online resources. Crucially, in the family hub model, the views and wishes of the family are put front and centre to the support they receive. By finding out what is working well for families and what areas they may be worried about, the family hub can help to build on families’ strengths and identify areas where further support might be needed. Organisations work together to provide this family help offer: the local authority children’s services; health visiting; school health; CAMHS; housing; maternity services and crucially the voluntary and community sector. All are equal partners in this family hub relationship. 

The Families First for Children is intended to rebalance the children’s social care system based on previous Government reviews and strategies which sets out the vision for a reformed system. The Family First for Children Programme Guidance (March 2025) has been produced to support safeguarding partners to implement Family Help and multi-agency child protection reforms and make greater use of Family Group Decision Making. There is an expectation that the programme funding explores targeted early help, child in need and child protection but there is a strong expectation that it links with support delivered through family hubs, youth services, health and housing provision. 

Below are some frequently asked questions about the key characteristics of a family hub:

Who should Best Start Family Hubs help? 

A Family hub is for families, from conception, through the child's early years, to later childhood, up to 19 years old (or 25 for young people with special educational needs and disabilities). There is a particular focus from the current government on 3 and 4 year olds. 

Family hubs provide family support services early, when families need them. These include universal and targeted services, including access to the intensive support of a supporting families keyworker where appropriate. 

Family hubs can support all families but they are designed to be particularly accessible to families who may be experiencing socio-economic disadvantage, have special education needs or a disability or experience exclusion due to being from a minoritised group. 

Where should Best Start Family Hubs be delivered?

Family hubs deliver services in a variety of ways and at a range of locations; this reflects what the national centre has heard from families they want from family hubs. Hubs are not necessarily about creating new buildings but focus on bringing services together and changing the way family help and support is delivered locally. In practice, this will be a mix of using children’s centres and other local authority spaces, and repurposing other public buildings such as nurseries, libraries, schools, leisure centres even high street shops. A significant proportion of family hub services will be delivered virtually. Other services will be delivered in the homes of families themselves – outreach will form an integral part of family hubs, overcoming the access barriers many families experience in receiving the support they need. 

What do Best Start Family Hubs provide?

Family hubs use a whole-family approach, providing a single access point to integrated family help services across health (physical and mental health) and social care, as well as voluntary and community support and education. A family hub makes these things come together. The integration of services into a family hub model may involve changes to the structure of local service provision, and may also involve a shift in how support is offered to families. 

Best Start Family hubs are an important part of the Giving Every Child the Best Start in Life Strategy and achieving the Government’s Plan for Change. There will be guidance released providing more information but there is an expectation that family hub have the autonomy to respond to specific needs in their areas based on local system assessments, population needs assessments and other local population data. This means that services included in a family hub will vary. For some, there may be a focus on homelessness, for others it might be youth mental health. It will be the seamless integration of universal services with targeted support that will be vital in determining positive outcomes. 

Who needs to be involved in Family Hub delivery?

The development of a family hub should involve key stakeholders from your local area across health, social care, education, voluntary and community sector and council for voluntary service organisations, and it should be representative of the 0–19 age range. This will include commissioners, service providers, frontline practitioners, parents, carers and children. Each family hub must meet the needs of the local community; a range of perspectives from the local area is therefore required to establish and deliver the best model of service provision for each hub. 
 

Need

Family hubs are intended to improve the outcomes of babies, children and young people and their families in response to systemic challenges and poor experiences. Best Start Family Hubs are also intended to achieve the Government’s Plan for Change and the Good Level of Development target. A non-stigmatising and universal approach with integrated partnership service delivery and active outreach can make a positive improvement to community experiences. 

Child development: Evidence shows that children who grow up in families experiencing socio-economic disadvantage, or exclusion due to being from a minoritised group, are more likely to have poorer outcomes across four key domains of child development, from conception to 19 years, compared to their same-age peers. These four domains are:

1. physical development
2. behavioural development
3. cognitive development
4. social and emotional development 

The research finds that children who experience early-life adversity have measurable adverse outcomes across all these developmental domains as early as two years of age, and that these developmental delays or difficulties are sustained into their teenage years and beyond. 

• Outcomes for parents and carers: Research by the UCL Institute of Health Equity suggests that there are intergenerational links in exposure to childhood adversity, which means that children who experience Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), are more likely to have a parent who also experienced ACEs. Although there are some studies which suggest links between ACEs and parental stress and the impact on parenting, there are also many psychosocial and policy approaches which can mitigate this risk.

Solution 

The principles of the family hub model have been developed based on existing evidence for various aspects of integrated ‘hub’ models. These are summarised below: 

• Providing support early in life
• Providing integrated family support across health, social care, voluntary and community services and education
  • There is a strong consensus in evidence and practice that greater integration can benefit families. High-quality integration is supported by a single point of access that families can use to engage with services that meet the myriad of needs they may have.
  • One of the key principles of successful family help services is multiagency working. Different service providers connect and coordinate, so that families get the support they need. This way of working is not just about making a series of referrals or interventions; rather, it is about professionals working together to make the differences that are needed for each family in a holistic way.
  • Integrated family help services improve the experience of families when they only need to tell their story once because services and professionals are appropriately working together to give them the right help. Better connected professionals reduce the burden on families of managing multiple relationships and appointments and means they should not have to continually retell their story.
  • Integration is significantly supported through digital data-sharing to give professionals the tools they need to collaborate more easily as a ‘team around the family’. It also promotes a way of working that allows professionals to spend more high-quality time with families and less time on administration and lower-impact work, ultimately yielding better value for money and better outcomes.
  • Another example of a well-evidenced integrated model of family support (specific to the 0–5s only) is the Sure Start initiative. An evaluation of Sure Start highlights the positive impact of integrated services on improving outcomes for children, in particular children and young people’s social development and an improved learning environment at home.
• Providing a service that is accessible to all families
  • Current provision can present a complex service landscape that can be difficult for families to navigate to receive the often multilayered help they require. This fragmented nature of support provision leaves families vulnerable to ‘falling through the gaps’, particularly when accessing support during transitional periods (e.g., moving from perinatal support services to early years support).
  • An integrated model of family help 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 the community sector and grassroots institutions will enable a much wider range of initial contact points, improving the ability of all families to access services.
  • Research indicates that families (particularly new parents and young people) appreciate being able to access family support services flexibly, using both physical and virtual spaces to improve access and experience.
• Taking a whole-family approach
  • The family hub model extends support to families with children and young people from conception to 19 years of age (or up to 25 for young people with special educational needs and disabilities). This means that families can access a range of support services appropriate to all stages of family life from within the same hub network, which reflects what families tell local authorities they want. Ensuring consistent support to families of all make-ups, with children of all ages, promotes the development of trusted relationships between families and professionals within family hub services.
• Taking a relational approach
  • Relational practice has consistently been found to improve both the experience and outcomes of families engaging in family support services. Relational practice means taking a family focus, where strengthening relationships within families is prioritised across a variety of situations (e.g., a breakdown in couple relationships) and may range from conception to teenage years. The delivery of universal services within children’s centres was seen as a way of removing barriers by avoiding a reliance on other services to build relationships with families, which would then connect them to children’s centre support. This integration reduced the likelihood of families falling between services due to ineffective referral pathways.
  • A relational approach also means taking account of specific family dynamics, the local situation and the wider sociocultural context to build on family strengths and support the different layers of a family’s needs in a holistic manner. Ultimately, the aim of a family hub is to strengthen families by providing help with the myriad of challenges they face. This is key to a preventative and early intervention approach that improves outcomes for families, children and young people.
• Supporting seldom heard communities
  • Outreach work, hub and spoke models and smaller satellite sites, as well as an online offer are seen as especially important for reaching under-served communities. Using community venues such as those owned by the voluntary, community sector or using other universal services such as libraries can have a positive impact on reaching seldom-heard groups.
  • There has been evidence from established family hub local authorities that hosting an engagement officer in the family hub team was also seen as an important resource for conducting outreach activities to engage seldom-heard groups such as fathers, SEND parents and carers, families with English as an additional language, or those who do not speak English.
• Focusing on the Home Learning Environment (HLE)
  • The Home Learning Environment is seen as central to achieving the Government’s Plan for Change and increasing the number of children achieving a Good Level of Development.
  • Early language acquisition impacts on all aspects of babies’ and young children’s non-physical development. HLE covers the interactions parents have in and around the home with their children from birth. The quality of the HLE is a key predictor of a baby’s and child’s early language ability and future success.
  • The Home Learning Environment is the experience for children at home in the context of their family and community. Parents who engage in meaningful activities that encourage thinking and talking to stretch a child’s mind as part of everyday life can enhance their child’s development.
  • The Government will set out HLE evidence based interventions that councils will be expected to use shortly.
  • The HLE requires working closely with early years settings, practitioners, family hubs, health and with parents themselves. It can be supported by a strong digital offer. 

The increasing evidence base, presented in The best start for life, linking the adverse impact of early stress, trauma and adversity on child outcomes, from conception, during pregnancy and the early years, is now overwhelming. The review points strongly to the need to ensure that children have the best start in life and live in environments that nurture and protect them from risks from their very earliest moments. 

https://foundations.org.uk/our-work/resources/family-hubs-planning-framework/