Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has made of the adequacy of funding of family hubs.

The government is making significant investments in family hubs. At the October 2021 Budget, the Chancellor announced a £301.75 million package to transform services for parents, carers, babies and children in half of upper tier local authorities across England. This will fund:

• A network of Family Hubs (£81.75 million)
• Local areas to publish their Start for Life offer (£10 million)
• Parent-infant mental health support (£100 million)
• Breastfeeding support services (£50 million)
• Parenting programmes (£50 million)
• Trials of innovative workforce models in a smaller number of areas to test approaches to improve the support available to new parents (£10 million).

An additional £28.7 million has been made available to these 75 local authorities to improve young children’s home learning environments, helping them to recover from the pandemic. This investment builds on the existing £39.5 million investment to champion family hubs, which includes:

• A new £12 million Family Hubs Transformation Fund which will support 12 local authorities in England to transform to a family hub model of service delivery
• Grants to accelerate the opening of family hubs across all regions of the country
• A new national centre for family hubs to provide expert advice and guidance, which is run by the Anna Freud Centre for Children and Families. This launched in May 2021.
• An evaluation innovation fund to build the evidence base
• Data and digital products that will support the practical implementation of family hubs by helping local professionals to share information more effectively and improve how families access and navigate services.

All upper tier local authorities also benefit from our increased investment in the Supporting Families programme. As part of the Autumn 2021 Spending Review, £200 million of additional investment was announced to expand the programme. This is around a 40% cash uplift in funding by 2024/25, taking total planned investment across the next three years to £695 million.