About Nesta

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.

More about us

In A fairer start

Fairer start local

This project started in November 2020 and is ongoing

Open call launched

Autumn 2020

Trial discovery projects begin

Spring 2021

Long-term partnerships begin

Autumn 2021

Project ends

Spring 2025

Working with local authorities to eliminate the school readiness gap.

Nesta’s vision is for every child to have the fairest possible start in life, so they can thrive and realise their potential. Our goal is that, by 2030, the UK will have eliminated the school readiness gap between those born into deprivation and their peers. This can’t be achieved by any single organisation in isolation, so we are working with innovation partners to help us realise our vision.

In the first phase of this programme, starting in spring 2021, we completed rapid discovery projects with Leeds City Council, City of York Council and Greater Manchester Combined Authority with Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council. Later, in the autumn of 2021, we began the second phase, establishing three year partnerships with each of the three local authorities in a £1.5 million programme. Together, we began to develop, design and test ideas for how innovation could transform early years services in each area.

The programme forms part of our fairer start mission set out in our 10-year strategy.

About the programme

Through this programme, Nesta is building long-term innovation partnerships with local areas. This means bringing together a local area’s deep knowledge and new ideas – about their services, families, children and delivery contexts – with Nesta’s capabilities and experience of service innovation and improvement. The partnerships with Leeds, York and Stockport are formed around the shared mission of supporting the most disadvantaged children to reach school with a good level of social, emotional and cognitive development and were set up based on the principles of making a difference using measurable impact.

Find out more about each partnership

Integrating health visiting and midwifery services

We brought together antenatal health professionals to identify a clear process for choosing eligible families for maternity support and to streamline their ways of working.

Using Stockport’s early years data to assess how likely a child is to meet age-related expectations

We analysed the effect of different characteristics on whether children perform as expected in early language and communication assessments.

Fostering parental engagement with early child development

We explored creative, experiential solutions to enhance engagement with parenting support, aiming to learn about how we could best drive and sustain motivation in parents.

Understanding decision-making gaps in the early years

We conducted research to optimise our data tool and support more data-driven decision-making for early-years practitioners.

Mapping speech, language and communication outcomes

We developing a linked dataset across health, education and other local authority-held data to target early-years support for disadvantaged children.

Enhancing parent-child interactions

We collaborated with City of York Council to understand more about how parents like to access support, working closely with them to learn how we could motivate and enable higher-quality playful interactions with their children.

Supporting fun interactions between children and their caregivers

We launched a series of vibrant play installations to support early speech and language development through creativity and play, encouraging moments of connection between young children and caregivers.