Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the number of Family Hubs and their efficacy.

The government announced a £301.75 million package to transform services for parents, carers, babies and children in half of the local authorities across England in the autumn 2021 Budget. This package will create a network of family hubs in those areas and builds on the £39.5 million already committed, which includes funding to support a further 12 local authorities to transform services to a family hub model.

Family hubs are a place-based way of joining up locally in the planning and delivery of family services. They are a local innovation, developed to meet local needs and better support families.

Through the family hubs programmes, the department will continue to learn and gather insights on family hub provision and their effectiveness. We will be building the evidence base through the evaluation of family hubs, both existing and new models, which will support local authorities with good practice on evaluation, implementation and outcomes of their family hubs services. Additionally, the department will be running behavioural insight projects to ensure take-up of family hub services by underrepresented families and we will also collect data, such as family hubs maturity and outcomes. This will help with developing effective family hubs.

Further information on the evaluation of family hubs can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/evaluation-of-family-hubs.