Stakeholder Survey - Early Childhood Offer Family Hubs

Overview

Lewisham Council is committed to an early childhood offer, which aims to improve outcomes for young children and their families and reduce inequalities. We are currently reviewing how we provide services that are accessed via Children and Family Centres across the borough.  These services make up the ‘Early Childhood Offer’, which consists of:

• play sessions
• baby massage
• parenting support and programmes
• healthy eating and lifestyle workshops
• family support
• information, advice, and signposting services.

What are we consulting on?

Last year we consulted with you and families about services that should be available in Children and Family Centres as part of a newly designed Early Childhood Offer.  Using what you and families told us, we are developing those services further and are now proposing merging these services with the Family Hubs (which the council provides) to make it easier to access more services across a wider age range, whilst still having the same level of dedicated 0–5-year-old services.  We want to hear your views on this proposal and use your feedback to further develop our plans.

What would change?

The overall aim is for help and support to be easily accessible for families in all Family Hub areas without having to travel very far.  Under the new proposal, a wide range of joined-up services will be available within a Family Hub area to provide a consistent offer across the borough.  These services will be delivered in different buildings within the Family Hub area so that there is greater coverage across each Family Hub area.  As Family Hubs develop, this will mean easier access to support with less need to travel to access services.

Why are we proposing this?

Currently, Children and Family Centres deliver services differently across the borough. This is because, over time, these services have developed independently, but not necessarily in the same way across the borough. This means that the services families currently access may differ depending on where they live.

Family Hubs have also been developing and some of the services within Family Hubs are the same or similar to services delivered within Children and Family Centres.  Some of our Family Hub buildings are also within, or close to, our Children and Family Centres.  

In addition, last year families told us that they wanted more to be done in terms of availability and access to services.  To achieve this and provide a more even spread of services across the borough, we will need to make some changes, such as moving some services to different locations and using our buildings differently – the development of Family Hubs provides an opportunity to do this.

What are Family Hubs?

Family Hubs offer a single access point and provide support to families with children from 0 to 19 years old and up to 25 for those with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND).

Under existing plans, a Family Hub area will consist of different buildings for services to be delivered from including the main Family Hub building and other supporting buildings such as Children and Family Centres, Youth Centres, Health Centres, Libraries, Adventure Playgrounds, Leisure Centres and more.  Under the new proposal, Children and Family Centres will join-up with Family Hubs to provide a 0-19 (25 with SEND) offer, whilst maintaining a dedicated Early Childhood Offer.

 How will it benefit families?

• All families will have access to more consistent services within the Family Hub area they live in.
• All families will only have to tell their story once so that they can start accessing what they need.
• Over time the intention is to have services available within 20 minutes walking distance at one of the network of buildings that make up a Family Hub area.

Why your views matter

As stakeholders who refer and signpost into these services, we want you to tell us what you think about this proposal to help shape our plans.