Middlesbrough Family Hubs’ Parenting Offer

Middlesbrough’s Family Hubs are shaping a parenting offer that is easy to access, relational, and woven through day-to-day early years practice in the borough. The approach combines nurturing support with flexible one-to-one delivery for parents of under-fives, underpinned by the four constructs of The Centre for Emotional Health’s Nurturing Programme: empathy, positive discipline, appropriate expectations, and self-awareness. This relational framework is embedded across the wider early years pathway, while adapting to its families’ particular needs.

Delivery includes the Parenting Puzzle Workshop (0-5 years) and Welcome to the World (from 24 weeks of pregnancy to newborn). The goal is to “make every contact count”, an ethos threaded through every call, visit, and message.

Middlesbrough has a long history with The Nurturing Programme, dating back to Sure Start in the early 2000s when schools and children’s centres delivered in tandem and parents and children received parallel messaging.

As school-based funding reduced, delivery moved primarily into community settings. Pre-COVID, the ten-week model of The Nurturing Programme reached families but brought practical challenges like long waits between cohorts, attrition across ten weeks, and high staffing/crèche costs despite fluctuating attendance. The pandemic then paused group provision entirely. As services returned, it became clear that some parents preferred flexible, lighter touch contact.

The Parenting Puzzle Workshop is delivered one-to-one via a mix of home visits, telephone calls, and WhatsApp video calls. This is done typically in 90-minute sessions without a break, with evening slots available for working parents.

Alongside this, universal antenatal classes (Pregnancy, Birth and Beyond) already operate locally. To avoid duplication, Middlesbrough pivoted to a one-to-one offer for Welcome to the World, either at home or in a Family Hub. This includes both the 8-week pathway and now also the shorter, 5-week offer depending on the pregnant parent’s gestation period and start date.

Access routes are intentionally simple, universal, and non-stigmatising: there are no formal referral forms. Parents either self-request via the website/Start for Life or professionals send a brief request to Middlesbrough’s central allocations inbox.

All Family Hub practitioners – 12.3 FTE across three localities – complete Working 1:1 with Families, Parenting Puzzle, Playful Parenting, and Welcome to the World training as a part of induction (new starters are queued for the next cohorts). The four constructs are threaded through daily practice, including in Amazing Babies (a rolling five-week group for 0-6 months) where each week includes a planned nurturing element alongside early communication and play.

To begin relationships early, Middlesbrough runs an antenatal literacy gifting pathway with the National Literacy Trust. Midwives gift the expectant parent a book at 16 weeks on behalf of the Family Hub. With consent, the Family Hub then phones to congratulate them and explain how reading to their unborn baby can help the baby recognise their parent’s voice and begin the attachment process. The Family Hub then continues proactive check-ins at birth, 6–8 weeks, 3–4 months and one year later, ideally with the same practitioner so that trust and comfort grows over time.

When it comes to language inclusion, practitioners start with a direct call to gauge language proficiency. If needed, they follow up with a home visit, involve a family member to interpret, or draw on multilingual council colleagues who are briefed on the session plan and the nurturing ethos. This has worked especially well with the Asylum Seeker and Refugee team.

In one recent case, a Community Development and Cohesion colleague who speaks Farsi co-facilitated sessions, and after being walked through the Parenting Puzzle, now proactively refers families to Family Hubs. With the support and goodwill of such cross-service partners, families experience the same relational, non-judgemental approach across touchpoints, reinforcing The Centre for Emotional Health’s values. Where live interpretation is not possible, translated key messages and visuals are also used so support can remain clear and accessible.

This relational approach also shapes school readiness. Practitioners focus on what adults can do with their babies during and between sessions, facilitating learning rather than just play with the baby. The aim is durable change in the home learning environment.

Although the one-to-one core offer improves access for families, it can also mean parents miss out on the peer support provided in groups through interaction with other parents. Middlesbrough mitigates this through continuity (the same practitioner across all contact) and by working on developing targeted, setting-based groups in the future (e.g., transition to nursery).

The shift to one-to-one has made support easier to reach for parents anxious about groups or unable to attend daytime sessions. Evening sessions, familiar practitioners and the ability to work at an individual pace have all helped parents. One mum initially felt worried, assuming the sessions might be tied to social care and unsure who would deliver them. Once she learned it was the Family Hubs with a familiar facilitator, her anxiety eased:

I felt more comfortable and less anxious and I began to like the sessions, and it was easy doing them as they were delivered in our house.”

Practitioners also report that this consistency increases trust amongst parents and willingness to try new strategies. Welcome to the World is valued for its non-judgemental framing and has proved adaptable both for families involved with social care and for wider antenatal demand.

Regular call pathways mean families across a wide geography do not need to travel to take part in evidence-based programmes. Practitioners report reaching more families who previously might never have accessed a Hub:

 

We’re going to them rather than expecting them to come to us… we’re probably reaching more hard-to-reach families because we’re proactively contacting them… it’s very non-judgemental.”

Practitioners also see shifts in parental confidence and knowledge/skills, and often reflect on the principles of The Nurturing Programme:

The Nurturing Programme is not the only programme out there. But to me it's an emotional health programme. It's not so much about the parenting, it's about the fundamentals of being a person and having that approach to life, having the resilience, having the emotional well-being to tackle every day and tackle the challenges that come to a head.”

Some parents echo this, realising they had gaps in understanding once the foundational ideas in a programme were explained:

I was given information that I needed but I didn’t realise I needed it! It reminded me of my childhood experiences and made me think about how I am going to bring my baby up, what I will keep the same and what I can do differently.”

For impact evaluation, Middlesbrough uses TOPSE for the Parenting Puzzle Workshop, MAAS/PAAS and WEMWBS for Welcome to the World.

For Parenting Puzzle, out of the 178 parents who completed the TOPSE between 2021-2025, average scores rose from 346 to 403 out of 480, an average gain of +57 points. For the 40% of parents with the lowest starting scores, the gains were larger: an average improvement of approximately +86 points, from 286 to 372 out of 480.

The TOPSE domains parents reported the largest improvements in were in discipline and boundaries (+10 points, from 37.8 to 47.8) and control (+9.7 points, from 35.9 to 45.6). In the last 12-month period, parents completing the TOPSE have improved by +65 points on average. This means that more parents feel confident and in control, and describe calmer, more consistent approaches at home.

The recent Family Hubs announcements are expected to consolidate Middlesbrough’s direction, rather than redirect it. The priority now is coordination; bringing under-fives, 5+ and school-based strands into a single, visible parenting pathway across services, while keeping choice for families. Targeted group delivery in nurseries and schools, particularly around transition to nursery, is a goal to be developed alongside a coordinated Nurturing Programme offer for parents of children 5+, with schools exploring Talking Teens.

After each programme, targeted families appear on a tracking and follow-up list where the aim is to check in every three months until the child reaches 4 years 11 months. The team is now looking to formalise longitudinal follow-up by plugging evaluation into this existing follow-up tracker. The goal would be to repeat TOPSE at 4 weeks and 3 months post-programme (with a possible 6-month check), using the tracker to schedule calls and link results back to baseline to better evidence longer-term impacts in parents and families.

Overall, Middlesbrough’s intentional design of one-to-one delivery, familiar practitioners, and simple access has made early years support more personalised and less judgemental, meaning more families can get help when they need it.

Joanne Tickle - Early Year’s & Family Hubs Parenting Lead, Middlesbrough Council

Email: [email protected]