Nesta and Ethos Foundation are seeking expert input on what makes an effective and sustainable system of support for families during pregnancy and the early years.

These integrated support systems include various services such as healthcare, playgroups, parenting advice, and help with jobs and benefits. In England, these have taken multiple forms over the last 25 years, including as Sure Start Centres and Family Hubs. In Scotland and Wales, providing integrated support services to families is central to current policy initiatives such as Flying Start.

We are gathering evidence as part of a broader project, A new era of integration in the early years. This project is designed to present a sector-wide, long-term vision for what joined-up family support services in the early years should aim to achieve, and the optimal design and governance of these systems in England. Nesta will also be pursuing similar policy objectives in Scotland and Wales, and the outputs from this work will be used to inform our work across all three nations.

Labour has set a target for 90% of children to hit a good level of development at five years old by 2030. Recent evidence from Sure Start makes clear integrated family support will be essential to achieving this: the centres delivered significant benefits for children's health and educational attainment, particularly among disadvantaged children. Over the past 15 years, however, services once joined up through the Sure Start programme have seen their scope and funding significantly reduced. The current Family Hubs programme falls short of compensating for these reductions. It operates in 75 local authorities only and is facing a funding cliff edge in March 2025.

There is an urgent need for a reinvigorated focus on rebuilding and improving these services, using the latest evidence and innovation to make them as effective as possible.

We believe that progress can best be achieved by the early-years sector working together in a collaborative way. Decades of policy, practice and research in the UK and abroad have created a wealth of collective intelligence about what does and does not work in designing and running integrated family support systems. The project proposes a number of activities, including this open call, to gather such knowledge and convene a wide range of stakeholders, across policy, practice, funding, research and lived experience.

Our aim is to summarise what we know, highlighting points of agreement, what trade-offs exist and what the sector thinks about these trade-offs. We hope this will direct future funding to programmes that will have sustained long-term impacts.

Our overarching question concerns the essential ingredients of a good system of integrated family support during pregnancy and the early years.

We have broken this down into the questions below. More detail is available in the accompanying submission form.

Submissions do not have to respond to every question: please feel free to answer only those questions you feel are relevant to your area of expertise.

We would also welcome evidence on topics not covered by these questions that you feel are relevant to our aim.

While this project is focused on informing policy in England, Nesta’s work more broadly will pursue similar objectives in Wales and Scotland. We therefore encourage and welcome submissions from organisations across all three nations.

To submit evidence, please complete this form and send to [email protected].

We want to make submitting evidence as easy and simple as possible. When filling in the form please feel free to include links to already published work with a short explanation of the relevant sections. If you would like to contribute but are unable to due to resource constraints, timing, format or some other element of this call then please email us at [email protected] to discuss what accommodations we can make.

The call for evidence closes on Friday 27 September 2024 at 23:59pm.