UK government is to start up Best Start Family Hubs - what happens in Scotland

6th July 2025

Scotland's equivalent to England's Best Start Family Hubs is rooted in the Getting It Right For Every Child (GIRFEC) approach, which aims to provide joined-up, holistic support around each family rather than crisis-only interventions.

Under GIRFEC, local Children's Services Planning Partnerships design family support services that address needs as soon as they arise, spanning health, education, social care and community agencies.

Whole Family Wellbeing Funding (WFWF)
The Scottish Government has committed £500 million over 2022-26 to Whole Family Wellbeing Funding.

WFWF isn't a grant pot for parents but underpins transformational change in how services are delivered, shifting investment from crisis responses to early intervention and prevention.

The ambition is that by 2030 at least 5% of community-based health and social care budgets will fund preventative whole-family support.

Local Family Hubs in Practice
Many local partnerships are already piloting or operating "family hubs" under GIRFEC and WFWF funding:

Home-Start Edinburgh Family Hubs offer group stay-and-play sessions, one-to-one home visiting, peer support, and signposting to debt and mental health services across four neighbourhood sites in Edinburgh.

Similar hubs exist in other areas, often run by collaborative consortia of charities, NHS boards and councils, tailored to local needs.

Scotland's model places greater emphasis on transforming the entire support system through partnership-led planning, rather than rolling out a uniform brand of hubs. Over the next few years, you'll see more local hubs emerging under the GIRFEC umbrella, tailored to each community's needs.

Highland's Whole Family Wellbeing Hubs: Local Authority Plans
Governance & Funding
Highland's Family Hubs sit within the Whole Family Wellbeing Programme, part of Scotland's £500 m funding for early, holistic family support. Locally, this is overseen by the Highland Integrated Children's Services Planning Board and the Highland Community Planning Partnership Board.

Locality-Focused Delivery
Services are organised around the nine Highland Community Partnership localities. Each locality co-designs its hub model based on local priorities, ensuring support is:

Community-led: families and local stakeholders shape services.

Assets-based: builds on existing community strengths.

Family-centred: accessible where families live.

Workforce-developed: cross-agency teams trained in holistic practice.

Needs-led: driven by data and evidence on local challenges.

Four Pillars of Support
The programme's structure mirrors national principles of whole-family care:

Pillar Focus
Children & Families at the Centre Co-production with families
Availability & Access Universal, timely, no-referral entry
Whole-System Joined-Up Support Health, education, social work, third sector working together
Leadership, Workforce & Culture Shared training, values and leadership
All pilot hubs must demonstrate how they embed these pillars in day-to-day delivery.

Application & Innovation Process
Highland CPP issues a Self-Assessment Toolkit inviting local projects to test new hub models. Proposals are:

Submitted via the locality governance group.

Assessed against needs-led criteria.

Funded as "Test of Concept" to trial innovative family support approaches.

Successful pilots scale up through reinvestment across other localities.

What's Next in Highland
Local Pilots Rolling Out: Expect a mix of drop-in family cafes, home-visiting teams, and digital-first support in areas like Caithness and Lochaber.

Evaluation Framework: Highland CPP will publish quarterly reports showing reach, family satisfaction, and partnership outcomes.

Scale-Up & Embedding: From late 2025, proven models will be mainstreamed and co-located within school or community centre settings.

Highland Whole Family Wellbeing Programme Funding Strategy
Pdf 30 Pages

Getting it right for every child Scottish Government

Latest Changes for England
Government revives family services, supporting 500,000 more kids
Up to 1,000 Best Start Family Hubs to be rolled out across the country to provide wide-ranging help for families, such as parenting and early development.

Parents across the country will benefit from greater support to make family life easier on their doorstep, as the government rolls out ‘Best Start Family Hubs' across every local authority - relieving pressure on parents and giving half a million more children the very best start in life.

Postcodes shouldn't dictate the support available, but one in four families with children under five cannot access local children's centres or Family Hubs, rising to one in three lower income families. This means thousands of parents cut off from vital community support networks and specialist services - left to navigate the challenges of parenthood alone - as well as a devastating impact on children's life chances, with early development, wellbeing and future attainment all in jeopardy.

Best Start Family Hubs will act as a one stop shop for parents seeking a range of support, including on difficulty breastfeeding, housing issues or children's early development and language, reassuring families that they have convenient access to support in their local area or can be efficiently connected to specialist local services.

Rolling out in every local authority by April 2026, Hubs will offer interventions and courses which work for parents - such as stay and play groups which help parents connect or sessions which help manage children's emotional needs - while providing a single point of access for services across health, education, and wellbeing.

Backed by over £500 million, the rollout will help transform the existing Family Hubs and Start for Life programme and create up to 1,000 hubs across the country by the end of 2028. This includes areas currently without any access to support hubs - from Warrington and Leeds to Reading and Somerset.

Sure Start revolutionised family and community services, with research showing that children who lived within a short distance of a Sure Start centre for their first five years were 0.9 percentage points more likely to achieve five good GCSEs at grades age 16.

Plans launched today will draw on lessons learned from the legacy programme, as well as build on infrastructure from the current Family Hubs and Start for Life programme. It complements work already underway to make family life easier and alleviate the burden on parents, including by expanding government-funded childcare to 30-hours, increasing the reach of school-based nurseries, and rolling out free breakfast clubs in every primary school to support working parents.

Education Secretary, Bridget Phillipson said:

It's the driving mission of this government to break the link between a child's background and what they go on to achieve - our new Best Start Family Hubs will put the first building blocks of better life chances in place for more children.

I saw firsthand how initiatives like Sure Start helped level the playing field in my own community, transforming the lives of children by putting in place family support in the earliest years of life, and as part of our Plan for Change, we’re building on its legacy for the next generation of children.

Making sure hard-working parents are able to benefit from more early help is a promise made, and promise kept - delivering a lifeline of consistent support across the nation, ensuring health, social care and education work in unison to ensure all children get the very best start in life.

Hubs will also act as a ‘front door’ to local family help workers for vulnerable families - providing a single point of entry to join-up universal services and children’s social care, ensuring early help before issues escalate.

This forms a key plank of the government’s direction setting ‘Giving Every Child the Best Start in Life’ strategy to be published tomorrow, making sure parents don’t have to battle complex systems to access basic parenting, health and family services.

Health and Social Care Secretary Wes Streeting said:

Every child - no matter their background - deserves the best start in life. I know what it’s like to grow up in a family where work is low-paid and insecure, and I know the power of a good support network.

That’s why, as part of our Plan for Change, rolling out these Best Start Family Hubs are so vital – one stop shops offering parents not only crucial connections with other families but also the health, education and wellbeing support they need.

By bringing together early support services and investing £500 million in children’s development, we’re taking preventative action that will improve lives and reduce pressure on the NHS – a key part of our 10 Year Health Plan.

Best Start Family Hubs will help families with services like:

Activities for children aged 0-5
Birth registration
Debt and welfare advice
Domestic abuse support
Early language support
Health Visiting
Housing support
Infant Feeding Support
Mental health services
Midwifery/maternity services
Nutrition and weight management
Oral health improvement
Parenting Support
Reducing Parental Conflict
SEND support and services
Stop smoking support
Substance (alcohol/drug) misuse support
Support for separating and separated parents
Youth services
To further streamline the path to support, a new Best Start digital service will also be launched to enable parents to access evidence-based guidance within seconds.

The digital platform will provide advice on a range of topics and connect parents to their local Best Start Family Hub, as well as link to the NHS App – making sure these services are at the centre of every community, whether on- or off-line.

Anna Feuchtwang, CEO, National Children’s Bureau

The Prime Minister’s Plan for Change set out his ambition to improve outcomes in early childhood. Now the government has put its money where its mouth is and committed to rolling out Best Start Family Hubs in every local authority.

With indications of a funding boost for babies and young children already included in the 10 Year Health plan, I am delighted to see children and families being given clear priority in government spending decisions. We hope to see a similar priority being given to the early years workforce in the Best Start in Life Strategy published tomorrow."

It comes as the government has already confirmed it will launch a new data tool for schools to assess whether there is more they can do in reception year to get children ready for year 1, and that every council will be expected to play its part with an individual statutory target for school readiness in their area.

The Hubs will be open to all, making a particular difference to the most vulnerable families and helping tackle the stain of child poverty ahead of the ambitious strategy due to be launched by the government’s Child Poverty Taskforce.

‘Giving Every Child the Best Start in Life’ also outlines the key role local authorities will play to drive improvements in the number of children achieving a good level of development by 5 years old.

Local authorities will build on their existing work with families, young children and babies, to develop ambitious local plans for meeting their 2028 target.