Parents across Buckinghamshire look back on Sure Start with fondness and gratitude for the services provided in those crucial early years. Now, Labour is building on that proud legacy by improving access and support for local families.
Best Start Family Hubs join the range of policies Labour has put in place to make life easier for families, including free breakfast clubs, more free school meals, 30 hours of government-funded childcare and bringing down the cost of uniforms.
Children growing up in Wycombe deserve the best start in life – nothing less. Through our Plan for Change, Labour will make it a reality.
Best Start Family Hubs
Parents in Wycombe are set to benefit from greater support to make family life easier on their doorstep, as the Labour government rolls out ‘Best Start Family Hubs’ across every local authority – relieving pressure on local parents and giving half a million more children the very best start in life.
Postcodes shouldn’t dictate the support available, but under the system left behind by the Conservatives, one in four families with children under five cannot access local children’s centres or Family Hubs, rising to one in three lower income families. This means thousands of parents cut off from vital community support networks and specialist services – left to navigate the challenges of parenthood alone – as well as a devastating impact on children’s life chances, with early development, wellbeing and future attainment all in jeopardy.
Labour’s Best Start Family Hubs will act as a one stop shop for parents seeking a range of support, including on difficulty breastfeeding, housing issues or children’s early development and language, reassuring families that they have convenient access to support in their local area or can be efficiently connected to specialist local services.
Rolling out in every local authority by April 2026, Labour’s Hubs will offer interventions and courses which work for parents – such as stay and play groups which help parents connect or sessions which help manage children’s emotional needs – while providing a single point of access for services across health, education, and wellbeing.
Backed by over £500 million, the rollout will help transform the existing Family Hubs and Start for Life programme and create up to 1,000 hubs across the country by the end of 2028. Sure Start revolutionised family and community services, with research showing that children who lived within a short distance of a Sure Start centre for their first five years were 0.9 percentage points more likely to achieve five good GCSEs at grades age 16.
Education Secretary, Bridget Phillipson said:
It’s the driving mission of this government to break the link between a child’s background and what they go on to achieve – our new Best Start Family Hubs will put the first building blocks of better life chances in place for more children.
I saw first-hand how initiatives like Sure Start helped level the playing field, transforming the lives of children by putting in place family support in the earliest years of life, and as part of our Plan for Change, we’re building on its legacy for the next generation of children.
Making sure hard-working parents are able to benefit from more early help is a promise made, and promise kept – delivering a lifeline of consistent support across the nation, ensuring health, social care and education work in unison to ensure all children get the best start in life.
Hubs will also act as a ‘front door’ to local family help workers for vulnerable families – providing a single point of entry to join-up universal services and children’s social care, ensuring early help before issues escalate.
This forms a key plank of Labour’s direction setting ‘Giving Every Child the Best Start in Life’ strategy, making sure parents don’t have to battle complex systems to access basic parenting, health and family services.
To further streamline the path to support, a new Best Start digital service will also be launched to enable parents to access evidence-based guidance within seconds.
The digital platform will provide advice on a range of topics and connect parents to their local Best Start Family Hub, as well as link to the NHS App – making sure these services are at the centre of every community, whether on- or off-line.
It comes as the Labour government has already confirmed it will launch a new data tool for schools to assess whether there is more they can do in reception year to get children ready for year 1, and that every council will be expected to play its part with an individual statutory target for school readiness in their area.
The Hubs will be open to all, making a particular difference to the most vulnerable families and helping tackle the stain of child poverty ahead of the ambitious strategy due to be launched by Labour’s Child Poverty Taskforce.
‘Giving Every Child the Best Start in Life’ also outlines the key role local authorities will play to drive improvements in the number of children achieving a good level of development by 5 years old. Buckinghamshire council will build on their existing work with families, young children and babies, to develop ambitious local plans for meeting their 2028 target