Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Answer of 29 September 2021 to Question 62680, on Pre-school Education, what assessment he has made of the consistency of early years services that are specifically non-childcare for children up to five years old across the UK.

The government is committed to championing family hubs. Local service delivery will vary from place to place, reflecting the needs of the local population. Family hubs bring together a wide range of services, including non-childcare services, for families with children of all ages (0-19) or up to 25 with special educational needs and disabilities, and contain a great Start for Life offer (for children aged 0-2) at their core.

The department has announced a £300 million package to transform services for parents and babies, carers, and children in half of local authorities across England. This will provide thousands of families access to support when they need it, ensuring that babies have the best start in life, as set out in ‘Best Start for Life: a vision for the critical 1,001 days’, the Early Years Review led by my right hon. Friend, the Member for South Northamptonshire, and delivering on our manifesto commitment to champion family hubs.

We are determined to ensure that family hubs are consistently applying the best evidence on what works in delivering family services. That is why we have established:

• a new National Centre for Family Hubs, run by the Anna Freud Centre, which will support councils with best practice, including how to effectively incorporate a range of 0-5 services into a family hub network;
• an evaluation innovation fund through which we are working with Ecorys UK, Sheffield Hallam University and 6 local authorities to build the evidence base.