Early childhood services: revealing the state of current practice Published in November 2020, our major report Planning early childhood services in 2020: Learning from practice and research on children’s centres and family hubs set out to understand more about how local places are delivering early years and maternity services in community settings. Early childhood is a period of rapid physical, social and emotional, behavioural and cognitive development, which lays the foundations for a happy and healthy life. This means it is an especially important period for early intervention to prevent or reduce the negative impacts of problems experienced by a child or family. Maternity and early years services are a vital means of both providing support to children and families who need it, and identifying those who may need additional support from other local services.
Children’s centres have been an important and evolving part of the local service landscape for the past two decades, intended to provide an accessible base and contact point for families to reach a range of local support services. Following a change in statutory guidance in 2013, the diversity of local approaches to providing this access to early childhood services has increased and expanded to include other models with similar aims, such as family hubs or integrated hubs. Today, early childhood services may differ from place to place: for example, in terms of their focus on whole-family support; their integration with other services; the age groups of children involved or prioritised; the balance between universal support for everyone and targeted support for the most vulnerable; or the number, spread and accessibility of physical hubs or centres. As local authorities, the NHS and other local partners work out how best to maintain and develop maternity and early years services in the face of current pressures, there is a demand for evidence to guide local decisions, and for support to plan an effective local system for children and their families.
18 | Early Intervention Foundation / Annual Report 2020–2021
