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Nesta is an innovation foundation. For us, innovation means turning bold ideas into reality and changing lives for the better. We use our expertise, skills and funding in areas where there are big challenges facing society.

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In A fairer start

A new era of integration in the early years

This project started in July 2024 and will end in April 2025

Establishing a long-term vision for the design and governance of joined-up family support services.

Integrated family support systems are a proven, effective means of improving children’s outcomes by addressing families’ needs and empowering them to support their children. Many years of austerity, a pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis have not only eroded families’ resources and resilience, but also the support available to them. Services once delivered via the Sure Start programme have seen their funding and scope significantly reduced. There is an urgent need to re-invigorate these approaches powered by a long-term vision, a clear set of targets and outcomes, and a strong national policy framework.

Impact goal

We want to leverage the early-years sector’s collective intelligence to inform a long-term vision for joined-up family support services, and the optimal design and governance of such a system.

Why are we doing this?

Robust evidence about the impacts of the Sure Start programme tells us that place-based family support systems that integrate services around the child or family are the best mechanism for delivering support to disadvantaged parents.

Since 2010, the funding supporting these initiatives has dramatically eroded. New initiatives, such as Family Hubs or Start for Life, are welcome in re-invigorating the idea of family-centred approaches but lack clarity on policy vision, funding, and scale necessary to drive nationwide progress.

Beyond a broad agreement on the importance of integrated family support systems, there is a lack of consensus on what the ultimate goals of these systems should be, and how they should function.

We believe progress can best be achieved by the sector working together collaboratively. This project, coordinated by Nesta and Ethos Foundation, will seek to align the sector around a policy framework which will enable strategic targeting of funding and resources to high-priority areas.

What are we doing?

The project will take a deliberative and collaborative approach to creating an effective central policy framework for integrated early-years support systems.

An open call for evidence - We will invite submissions from stakeholders on the essential preconditions of good integrated early-years delivery.
A rapid literature review - This will synthesise findings from existing UK policy documents, evaluations and research into integrated early-years delivery.
A Delphi-inspired survey - A two-stage process in which sector experts are first surveyed to establish the range of opinion on several key parameters of integrated early-years delivery. In a second survey, this range of opinions is considered by the same participants to explore the potential for consensus.
A series of workshops and roundtable discussions - Designed to reflect on the findings from the previous three stages and identify a consensus position.

This process does not guarantee that consensus is possible on all or even some aspects of a new framework. The project’s learning about current state of knowledge in the sector, highlighting points of convergence, trade-offs and the collective wisdom of the sector on those trade-offs will be synthesised.