Family Hubs: Finance
(asked on 10th December 2025) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the impact of not extending Start for Life funding to new Best Start for Life Family Hub areas on the delivery of integrated early-years services by local authorities.
Delivering integrated, joined-up health, education, and family support is at the heart of our ambition to raise the healthiest generation of children ever.
Healthy Babies, formerly Start for Life, funding is helping families during the critical 1,001 days, and parents have said that they are more confident in feeding their babies and have better perinatal mental health because of this support. Further information is available at the following link:
We continue to assess how we can best support early years service integration across the country and remain committed to working with delivery partners locally to achieve this.
Healthy Babies is one element of our broader commitment to supporting babies, children, and families. From April 2026, Best Start Family Hubs will expand to every single local authority, backed by over £500 million, to reach up to half a million more children and families. This funding will help all local authorities to integrate a range of statutory and non-statutory child health and family services.
Best Start Family Hubs will form part of the architecture of the Neighbourhood Health Service. Through the shifts from hospital to community and from treatment to prevention, we will further strengthen the integration of services, helping to ensure that babies and their families can get the support they need, when and where they need it.