Involving parents and carers as equal partners in early years support is a nice idea, but sometimes seems too difficult to put into practice in a meaningful way. This isn’t the case with A Better Start (ABS) – the ten-year, £215 million programme set up by The National Lottery Community Fund.
There are five ABS partnerships:
- Blackpool, Lancashire.
- Bradford, West Yorkshire.
- Lambeth, south London.
- Nottingham.
- Southend, Essex.
They support parents to give their babies and very young children the best possible start in life. The programme knows not all parents and carers have the same starting point; that they have different needs, beliefs, values and abilities – which is why it strives to promote inclusion and equality, and reduce disadvantage.
Now in its seventh year, the programme has unearthed a wealth of effective and practical approaches to co-production – where families have an equal place at the table, shaping support systems and ways of working for the better. Four lessons in particular stand out:
1. It starts from the top: involving parents, carers and communities as equal partners begins with a strong organisational culture that promotes this.
Co-production is most effective when it is embedded at the earliest stages – when there are opportunities to build parents’ insights into the structures and processes that will require them throughout.
At A Better Start Southend, no governance meeting is considered legitimate unless at least two local parents, drawn from more than 60 trained parent champions, are present – playing a key part in finance, risk and other committees.
Jeff Banks, director of A Better Start Southend, explains, ‘By having parent voice at the forefront of our decision-making committees, we are kept accountable for delivering on our promise that all services are developed following the principles of co-production. They also provide a forum in which politicians and senior health, education and social care officers can hear first-hand about the challenges that people and communities are facing.’
2. It covers all bases: genuine co-production means that parents and carers can contribute across all levels and stages.
Putting this into practice has meant involving families in a wide breadth of activity, including designing services, directly delivering peer support to local families, and deciding how funding will be spent.
In Nottingham, in response to feedback that families are often ‘done to’ rather than ‘done with’, Small Steps Big Changes (SSBC) offered different ways in which local parents can become involved. Cristina started volunteering with SSBC as a ‘parent ambassador’, then attended board meetings and chaired Community Partnerships as a ‘parent champion’. Finally, she became a ‘family mentor’, part of a paid peer workforce that has helped more than 2,500 children with its Small Steps at Home toolkit.
Far from their involvement being tokenistic, parents are, Cristina says, ‘really one of the most important things within Small Steps Big Changes… parents leading the way was actually the way it worked’.
The family mentor workforce now has 57 full-time equivalent roles, equating to 76 paid employment opportunities for parents.
3. It’s all about relationships: building effective partnerships is critical.
Embedding co-production across ABS has meant redefining the traditional ‘service provider’ and ‘service user’ relationship. Parents and carers are recognised as experts in their own lives – and staff are facilitators, enabling them to exercise their expertise effectively.
Better Start Bradford has made this the ethos of its Better Place initiative, designed to enhance children’s physical environments. Through a mix of capital projects and community activities, the scheme involves local people in developing safer and healthier places for expectant parents and families with young children to play and walk – increasing access to outdoor space.
Parents are closely involved, working with researchers and the Better Place Team (a partnership between Better Start Bradford, Bradford Council, Groundwork UK, the local public health team and voluntary and community sector groups) to map environmental issues, identify hotspots and ‘grotspots’, and outline the changes they would like to see.
Engagement between the programme and families has been excellent, with activities promoting the use of outdoor spaces including coffee mornings and ‘plant and play’ sessions. Ultimately, more than 40,000 sq m of outdoor space has been redeveloped, and exposure to harmful emissions has been reduced far beyond initial targets.
4. It works: co-production truly improves services – and outcomes for all involved.
Parents, carers and communities continue to shape ABS services – ensuring they are appropriate, accessible and engaging; contributing to positive outcomes for those who need them. Parental engagement has helped practitioners to think more creatively about ways to reach and support families – taking projects in new directions.
In Blackpool, families reported that they could be better connected with services in their communities, while professionals also expressed concern that services aren’t always reaching the right people.
‘Community connectors’ (CCxs) are people active in their communities recruited into paid roles. They are provided with an understanding of early child development and an awareness of local services available – enabling them to help families access the support and advice they need.
The idea for CCxs came from the community – working alongside the Centre for Early Child Development to co-design a service that would work for them. They have been instrumental to increasing engagement with Blackpool Better Start services, including infant feeding, sling libraries, healthy eating and physical activity courses. Increased engagement contributes to improving many outcomes, such as reducing isolation and supporting physical, social and emotional learning.
At the Lambeth Early Action Partnership (LEAP), dialogue with parents opened up a fresh commitment to equality and diversity. During the start of the pandemic, the significance of Covid-19 for the Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) community, coupled with the rising #BlackLivesMatter movement, resulted in the community feeling uneasy and frustrated. LEAP recognised the benefits that could come from providing a trusted space for parents to share their thoughts and feelings about racial inequalities.
Together with parents, LEAP has embarked on a mapping exercise to co-produce a blueprint identifying practical opportunities at the local level, within early years and community settings, for inclusive and diverse working. LEAP has since delivered several initiatives – including a Black History Month campaign and ensuring marketing materials are representative. While this work has naturally evolved to become more action-focused, it was born from an opportunity for parents to share their thoughts.
IN CONCLUSION
The National Lottery Community Fund knows that people understand better than anyone what is needed in their communities. The funder listens to, learns from, acts upon and facilitates the things that matter to people – including their local services. Working alongside the National Children’s Bureau – with more than 50 years of experience championing children’s rights across the country – we know that real co-production means ensuring families’ voices and ideas, including children’s, genuinely shape how services are designed and delivered in a lasting way.
Families are rightly involved in every aspect of A Better Start, whether that is, for example, governance, delivering activities, or just spreading the word locally to others in the community who might benefit from the programme. After all, no-one has a greater stake in seeing their children flourish and thrive than parents and carers themselves.
Frances Lyons is head of research and evidence, National Children’s Bureau, and Tom McCulloch is head of funding, A Better Start, The National Lottery Community Fund
