Giving Every Child the Best Start in Life

Melanie Onn Excerpts

Monday 7th July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Bridget Phillipson]

Yes, I can confirm that. The hon. Member is right to draw attention to the critical work of our health visitors and our speech and language therapists, who do some amazing work to support children and families, but I appreciate that they often feel overstretched and overworked at the moment. That is why we want to ensure—and I am working closely with the Health Secretary on this—that we not only support more health visitors to train and to work in the profession, but deliver improvements to health visiting to better support parents, to make it easier to access health visiting services and to ensure that more children are getting the early checks that are so important in identifying speech and language need at the earliest possible point.

I have seen some brilliant work that our speech and language therapists have done on this. While some children will of course continue to have an enduring need that requires specialist intervention, I think there is more we can do in the reception year, with the Nuffield early language intervention, to identify children who might need additional targeted support, but who can make very rapid progress with that support. The evidence is clear that that is particularly the case for more disadvantaged children.

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes) (Lab)]

Today’s news on Best Start family hubs is absolutely brilliant. The loss of Sure Start in communities such as mine is still keenly felt by the local community. However, families need support not just from Monday to Friday, as was brought home to me last week on a visit to the family department of my local hospital. Is any thought being given to extending services—particularly when it comes to healthcare and education, as well as the additional support in these hubs—to weekends?

[Bridget Phillipson]

My hon. Friend is right about access to both family support services and health services. I have discussed this with the Health Secretary, and I know he takes a keen interest in it. When families are able to access appointments only during the school day, that can mean children’s attendance at school takes a hit. That is why, through the NHS 10-year plan, we are working very closely on that. Also, one of the lessons I saw from the last Sure Start programme was how, when we listen to communities and parents, we deliver the services they want, which are not always the services the professionals think they need. That is why working with parents and communities on designing services in a way that is genuinely accessible to them will be a critical part of what we expect local authorities to do.