How are Place-Based Partnerships Changing the Game for Families?

Have you ever wondered how local communities can come together to make life better for children and families? Rachel Kent Horwood, from the National Children’s Bureau delves into a new report.

The recently published Programme Insight, A Better Start through Place-based Partnerships, explores the benefits of place-based initiatives.

A Better Start is built on this approach, where place-based partnerships allow organisations in the same local area to team up with local stakeholders to tackle challenges and improve outcomes for families.

Place-based partnerships are effective because, through this approach, local organisations and communities can come together to design services and support that truly work for the people who use them. Through a joint effort, A Better Start partnerships and local organisations address social and economic issues, creating sustainable services that are effective in supporting local families. Place-based working also allows teams to test new ideas on a smaller scale, gathering the evidence on what works, before rolling them out more widely.

A Better Start values evidence-based, co-produced practices through which communities are encouraged to take an active role in shaping services. Everything is backed up by data and evaluation to ensure their work is having a real, measurable impact.

Here’s how the ABS partnerships are making waves:

Empowering Families Through Co-Production

Lambeth Early Action Partnership (LEAP) is showing how much of a difference it makes when you put parents and caregivers in the driver’s seat. The programme used a shared measurement system to pool data, enhancing efficiency and consistency in data collection and analysis. Through collective impact analysis, they’ve brought community members into decision-making so that services meet the needs of local families.

Letting Communities Take the Lead

A Better Start Southend helped create City Family CIC, a community-led company run with local families. This setup gives families real control over the services they use, ensuring they’re shaped by the culture and needs of the people who live there.

Making Services More Accessible

Nottingham’s Small Steps Big Changes came up with a brilliant idea- ‘Room to Play.’ This town-centre space gives families a welcoming, low-pressure route to engage with. It has been especially great for reaching families who might otherwise feel overlooked, helping them feel part of something bigger, and signposting them to other support they might benefit from.

Streamlining Support for Families

Blackpool Better Start introduced a Family Hub Triage system to make accessing services easier for families and ensured that families were involved in its design.

Improving outdoor spaces

Better Start Bradford’s community-led ‘Better Place’ project is a collaborative effort to improve outdoor spaces in disadvantaged areas of Bradford. By focusing on creating child-friendly environments, it aims to promote healthier, more active lifestyles and enhance early childhood development.

The examples of ABS work show how powerful it is to let local families and communities lead the way. When they’re involved in designing and running services, those services are more effective, more sustainable, and ultimately, more likely to improve the lives of babies and young children. It is not just about fixing problems. It is about creating a system that learns, adapts, and grows with the community.

Find out more in our report: A Better Start through Place-based Partnerships

About A Better Start

A Better Start is a ten-year (2015-2025), £215 million programme set-up by The National Lottery Community Fund, the largest funder of community activity in the UK.

Five A Better Start partnerships based in Blackpool, Bradford, Lambeth, Nottingham and Southend are supporting families to give their babies and very young children the best possible start in life. Working with local parents, the A Better Start partnerships are developing and testing ways to improve their children’s diet and nutrition, social and emotional development, and speech, language and communication.

The work of the programme is grounded in scientific evidence and research. A Better Start is place-based and enabling systems change. It aims to improve the way that organisations work together and with families to shift attitudes and spending towards preventing problems that can start in early life. It is one of five major programmes set up by The National Lottery Community Fund to test and learn from new approaches to designing services which aim to make people’s lives healthier and happier

The National Children’s Bureau is coordinating an ambitious programme of shared learning for A Better Start, disseminating the partnerships’ experiences in creating innovative services far and wide, so that others working in early childhood development or place-based systems change can benefit.

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Visit the A Better Start website to find out more.