Best Start in Life Antenatal offer: IOW Family Hubs Parenting Support

“It Takes a Village – The Case for Family Support in Every Community” 

by Barnardo’s, and Andrea Leadsom’s 2021 report and the UK Government’s 2023 response to the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care:

• Family Hubs as Community Anchors: These hubs offer a proven model for supporting families, combining universal services (like parenting groups) with targeted help (e.g. benefits, employment advice). They should be accessible both in-person and online, acting as a “local nerve centre” for families.
• Barnardo’s Experience: With 62 centres nationwide, Barnardo’s has demonstrated that embedding diverse support services in communities leads to better outcomes for children and families and reduces the need for costly interventions like care proceedings.
• Economic Impact: An analysis of Barnardo’s intensive support service on the Isle of Wight showed a return of £2.60 for every £1 invested, saving the state approximately £1 million annually.
• Government Reform Plans (2023): The UK Government announced a £45 million Families First for Children pathfinder to pilot new early help approaches in 12 areas. Barnardo’s supports this initiative and emphasizes that Family Hubs should be central to these pilots, ensuring help is “embedded yet visible” with an “effective front door.”
• Continuum of Support: The ideal model provides support from pre-birth to age 18, integrating universal and specialist services in a multi-agency setting.
• Andrea Leadsom visited IOW Family Hubs and she felt strongly that although there were a lot of services and support embedded in the offer the area to focus on was pregnancy and to build on the connection between maternity and Family Hubs and maximise the use of systems. Our data highlights that there are potentially more opportunities to engage with parents antenatally to start them on a journey to accessing information, support and guidance through a one stop shop.

What were the things you wanted to achieve or change through the project?

• Increased contacts and communication with antenatal parents during pregnancy
• Offer of an evidence based antenatal programme beneficial for first time parents or those with new relationships/larger age gaps in children. Decided on Welcome to the World (Centre for Emotional Health) as we also deliver the programme for older ages and stages so the principles continue across all the programmes.
• Maternity – midwives connecting families to the Family Hub services and encouraging engagement – a significant number of families were in the centres antenatally but without a universal antenatal offer midwives struggled to know how to connect them with support
• More engagement post birth, parents feeling comfortable and confident to engage with services and gain peer support
• Increased parental awareness of the offer and how to access family hub support and modelling the norm for accessing information support and guidance via a Family Hub

• How did you go about setting the project up/getting it running and getting people on board with it?

  • Family Hub delivery board – delivery plan for the Parenting support strand
  • Research about parenting programmes available
  • Direct communication with maternity community leads as well as sign up from the senior maternity managers
  • Maternity digital officer making it possible for midwives to send parents details to the Family Hub at the 16 week appointment via Badgernet

   

What has been the impact been of the programme? For example; this could be public health and well-being; financial, environmental, social improvements.

• More parents accessing antenatal information, support and guidance and including fathers or those more under represented
• Parents more comfortable with accessing support postnatally
• Impact on more parents breastfeeding – being more informed pre birth
• More parents self- requests support and booking on workshops etc 

 What will you change, or what has changed, as a result of its success?

• The importance of building and maintaining the relationships with the midwives at all levels. Family Hub Workers connected with the midwives in centres. Family Hub Team Lead connected with community midwife leads, Senior Managers connected with the strategic leads . This needs to be continually refreshed and checked in and not assume it is still where it was a few months ago – there are so many changes it is easy to revert to a previous behaviour.
• We continue to share data about how many parents are being sent through via Badgernet and attendances on the antenatal programme so midwifery managers can review the practice and ensure any new midwives are confident with the processes.
• Co-delivery of the welcome to the world antenatal programme has ensured it is supported and promoted by health partners and is meeting the family’s needs as they prepare for parenthood
• The value of using an evidence-based programme that all agencies had confidence in and matched all agencies values and practices
• The links between the strands has been key for all elements ie Parenting support, infant feeding and parent infant relationships as all related to 1001 days
• Included professionals’ workshop about the programmes we offer – now available as recorded versions to save time and increase access
• We have also been working with the Centre for Emotional Health to collect evidence of impact. 

The evaluation with Centre for Emotional Health (CfEH) has been valuable in developing a useful tool to capture the impact of the course. We have had some feedback from CfEH using the evaluation and outcome measures collected: 

The data confirms both parents report improving wellbeing. Parents’ mental wellbeing is reported using the WEMWBS scale. WEMWBS can be used to label people as having low, average, or high mental wellbeing.

• Overall, IoW parents on Welcome to the World report a significant improvement in mental wellbeing

  • Average scores are 42.8 at week 1, rising to 46.9 by week 8

  • Parents with lower starting scores are less likely to complete a week 8 questionnaire

As a result of the feedback and discussions we are now using a short version of the WEMWBS to see if this increases post course completion.

Course leaders showed keen interest in each individual couple. Being in a same sex couple at times can be daunting but I felt put at ease and fully excepted.

• The midwife session was very helpful and informative. We’ve also found the group trainers very warm, welcoming and knowledgeable. Personally, I found when the trainers talked about their knowledge and experience this was far better than talking from the manual.

I enjoyed how welcoming everyone was and not judgmental towards others opinions that are different to their own, I enjoyed learning about different things about my baby, for example when he can start hearing (how many weeks from) what I say whilst in the womb and reacting to the sounds, I enjoyed learning the difference development stages and about birth

• I particularly enjoyed sharing my own experience with other ladies as this made me to feel a better mom. I love how interactive this course was, it never was boring as there always was some task to face. It was interesting to see other parents perspectives on things and be able to ask anything without judgment. As much as I am a mom already, this helped me to gain a confidence to be a mom on my own as this baby’s experience is different to me and I wanna be as much prepared as possible. It felt nice to get support from the team and to get to know more people who is about to have babies, it will be interesting to see them in future and see how the things going. I been informed about Five to Thrive group which I will start.  I definitely will come to visit the centre once the baby is here as I felt so welcomed 

Any recommendations for other councils interested in implementing similar projects?

• Ensure midwifery is positioned within Family Hubs/Centres and connected to the centre offer and strategic leads see the benefit and look at how the pathway for families is designed to make the route to services easy

Things you may have done differently in retrospect.

• Focused on the pathway earlier so the Badgernet changes could have been implemented sooner
• Have sign up from a strategic level as well as the practitioners on the ground when moving at a pace

How effective has the project been?

 Is it likely to continue going forward in addressing its initial objectives?

• It is now an essential part of the offer for expectant parents to be given the opportunity to attend the Welcome to the World and be given links to appropriate information and support as part of the start for life offer
• Data is confirming the benefit to the parents during the antenatal period and beyond.
• Best Start in Life : Isle Of Wight Family Centres
• Padlet Best Start in Life
• Paper versions also available
• Email sent at 16 weeks – with offer of Breastfeeding workshop and Welcome to the World and links to Start for Life info
• Post birth email to remind parents of the services available now baby is born and opportunities to attend Breastfeeding play groups, Baby Play and Five to Thrive – bookable via eventbrite or drop in
• Getting the offer right at the start provides the message that the Family Hubs are the One Stop shop for all things parenting and family support from this point on