Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty's Government how much new funding for family hubs they have set aside in the Autumn Budget and Spending Review for each financial year to 2024–25; and how local authorities can apply for these funds.

At Budget, the government announced £82 million to create a network of family hubs. This is part of a wider £300 million package to transform services for parents, carers, babies and children in half of council areas across England. The department will set out more detail in due course on how this new funding will be allocated.

The department has previously announced £39.5 million of funding to support the implementation of family hubs. Some of this has been direct support to local authorities:

• A £12 million transformation fund to open family hubs in at least 12 new areas in England. This fund launched on 2 November 2021. Eligible local authorities have been invited to submit bids to the department by 17 December 2021
• Grants to accelerate the opening of family hubs across all regions of the country (through the Children’s Social Care Covid-19 Regional Recovery and Building Back Better Fund). 9 local authorities have been chosen to work regionally to share good practice (total £1 million). 25 local authorities have been allocated funding to accelerate the opening of family hubs in their local areas (total £2.2 million)

The remainder of funding is for programmes to support the development of family hubs policy, evidence and data and digital implementation, covering mixed teams of local authorities, officials, and contracted partners. This includes:

• A new national centre for family hubs to provide expert advice and guidance and an evaluation innovation fund to build the evidence base (£2.5 million over three years from the 2020/21 academic year to the 2022/23 academic year, announced at Budget 2020)
• Data and digital products that will support the practical implementation of family hubs, through the family hubs-growing up well project (£11.8 million from the Shared Outcomes Fund, announced at Autumn Budget 2020; £10 million from a second Shared Outcomes Fund award announced in October 2021 totalling £20 million, of which the other £10 million was put to the Transformation Fund above (the £12 million total for the Transformation Fund includes a further £2 million of capital funding from the Department for Education’s budget))