Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what guidance is issued to local authorities, Family Hubs and NHS services on delivering evidence-based parent–infant relationship support in the first 1,001 days following birth.

We understand the importance of parent-infant relationships on a baby’s cognitive, emotional, and physical development. That is why we are committed to improving parent-infant relationship support.

Through Healthy Babies, we are investing £109 million in 75 local authorities in areas with high levels of deprivation to enhance parent-infant relationship support. In March 2026 we published guidance to local authorities setting out our expectations for how this funding should be used. The expectations have a particular focus on providing information and advice, building workforce capability and capacity, joining up support locally, as well as providing easy access to high quality, evidence-based services and support. The guidance also sets ambitions for those local authorities not receiving Healthy Babies funding to build the foundations for this provision where possible.

The Department has recently refreshed the Healthy Child Programme Guidance for practitioners, providers, and local authorities, which includes the importance of providing support in the transition to parenthood, including evidence-based parent-infant relationship support. Transition to parenthood is one of the six high impact areas for health visiting.

In addition, NHS England routinely identifies and disseminates best practice and learning across National Health Services and clinical networks to support local delivery of parent-infant relationship support.