Giving children a better start in life through Family Hubs

In 2021, Anna Freud was commissioned by the Department of Education (DfE) to support the recently launched Family Hubs programme through a new national centre.

Family Hubs provide a single point of access for children, young people and their families to access support and information from different services. The National Centre for Family Hubs (NCFH) was established to support local authorities in the design and implementation of the hubs, spread best practice and develop a supportive network through national and regional events.

Right now, 1 in 5 children and young people in England have a probable mental health disorder and, at Anna Freud, we believe an increased focus on prevention and early intervention is needed to close this gap.¹ Community assets like Family Hubs can play a crucial role in this by giving children a better start in life.

As this phase of the NCFH draws to a close, we look back on highlights from the last few years.

Building connections within communities

While we developed national requirements and boundaries to support local authorities in delivering Family Hubs, we also offered lots of flexibility to meet the unique needs of each community. At the heart of this has been a relational approach, with a focus on bringing members of the community together – from key stakeholders in the local authority to schools and health visitors – to develop family-centred working cultures.

For example, in North Northamptonshire we supported the local authority to co-produce a perinatal mental health and parent-infant relationships strategy with professionals and families. We placed an emphasis on hearing from seldom heard groups, including those from marginalised ethnic backgrounds, fathers, and younger parents and carers, along with centring the voice of babies. By asking stakeholders what better support would look and feel like for babies, we created a vision that inspired and guided the project, which ultimately led to joined up support for families that focused on meeting their needs.

The power of participation

When the centre launched, we recruited Parent and Youth Participation Advisors – Dina and Naz - to work with us. At first, their input focused on sharing their own experiences of mental health challenges, including challenges accessing services, to help local authorities enact change.

However, as the programme and Anna Freud’s participation journey developed, Dina and Naz’s roles grew too. This has included supporting services to build meaningful engagement with children, young people and families, drawing on best practice from the Lundy model. They’ve also spoken at our national and regional conferences, along with reviewing many written materials, breathing life into the work.

“A highlight from the role was speaking at our annual conferences about how services can create participation and co-production opportunities for young people using the Lundy model as a framework,” said Naz Siddique, Youth Participation Advisor. “It’s also been good to help Family Hubs maintain a youth focus. I feel adolescents are often neglected and seen as a "difficult" group to work with so it's important to destigmatise that.”

Find out more Anna Freud’s Participation Strategy, which was launched in 2024, through this blog reflecting on our participation work over the past year and vision for 2025 and beyond.

Creating networks of learning

Family Hubs are a complex and nuanced model, so creating space for local authorities to share best practice and learn from pitfalls was a huge priority. Our national and regional events were central to this, and provided a platform for professionals to learn from each and hear from experts in the field.

In under four years, we organised five national conferences along with 38 national and 127 regional events attended by over 5000 people. Attendees represented 95% of all local authorities in England, not just those funded to deliver Family Hubs, ensuring learning from the programme benefit countless families across the country.

Championing the early years

With requests for specialist mental health services from children and young people steadily rising, NCFH has advocated for giving children the best start in life to turn the tide and protect against mental ill health.^2,3

Research consistently shows that investing in the early years reaps benefits for society. For example, a US study showed that comprehensive, high-quality, early years programmes for disadvantaged children yield a 13% return on investment per child each year through better education, economic, health, and social outcomes.⁴

Thanks – in part – to our advocacy, there have been encouraging steps from the Governments towards a greater focus on early years. This includes a target for 75% of reception children being ‘school-ready’ by 2028. This would mean an extra 40,000 to 45,000 children meeting their early learning goals such as, social and emotional development, each year.

Find out more

Anna Freud offers a range of resources, training and networks developed by expert clinicians to support early years professionals. For example, sign up to our newsletters such as Early Years in Mind, a free network for practitioners, or the Anna Freud General Newsletter, our monthly e-newsletter with all the latest news, research, events and fundraising activities from Anna Freud.

Notes:

1. Newlove-Delgado T, Marcheselli F, Williams T, Mandalia D, Dennes M, McManus S, Savic M, Treloar W, Croft K, Ford T. (2023) Mental health of children and young people in England, 2023 - Wave 4 follow up to the 2017 survey. NHS England.

2. NHS Digital. (2024, October 10). Mental health services monthly statistics, performance August 2024.

3. NHS Digital. (2018, October 11). Mental health services monthly statistics - Final July, provisional August 2018.

4. Garca JL, Heckman JJ, Leaf DE, Prados MJ. Quantifying the Life-Cycle Benefits of an Influential Early-Childhood Program. J Polit Econ. 2020 Jul;128(7):2502-2541. doi: 10.1086/705718. Epub 2020 May 21. PMID: 32616965; PMCID: PMC7331936.

About Anna Freud

Anna Freud is a mental health charity and we’ve been supporting children and young people for over 70 years. We listen to and learn from their diverse voices, and integrate this with learnings from our science and practice to develop and deliver mental health care. This holistic approach has world-changing potential – our training, schools support, networks, partnerships and resources equip those who impact children and young people’s lives with the knowledge and skills to support their mental health.