Encouraging words from the Minister for Family Hubs, Janet Daby, and the Children's Commissioner, as we celebrated ‘Family Hubs Five Years On’ in Parliament
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Family Hubs ensure families with children aged 0-19 can access integrated early help to overcome difficulties and build stronger relationships.

The Family Hubs Network Ltd is an independent, not-for-profit organisation supporting local authorities and public, voluntary and private sector stakeholders as they implement Family Hubs.

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Family Hubs are one stop shops where professionals and partners can work together, supporting and strengthening the family relationships that are so important throughout life…These hubs can be a lifeline. They can make a massive difference to parents, carers and children’s extended families, friends, neighbours, to our communities and to our neighbourhoods. They can put in place a support structure, enabling a variety of services to act quickly before problems escalate. And that’s what we want. We want to help. We want to help early and we want to prevent difficulties in the future.
Janet Daby MP, Minister for Children & Families, 2024
Support for the earliest years is being transformed. Our ‘Start for Life’ offer will point families-to-be in the direction of their Family Hub, and the help they can get there will include a warm welcome, parenting advice, antenatal help, health visiting, mental health and infant feeding support and even advice on relationship building or how to get into work. There will be a strong focus on dads and co-parents who have for far too long been left out.
Dame Andrea Leadsom DBE, Former Start for Life Minister, 2023
[Family] hubs are based on co-production, drawing institutions and community together to work on local issues. This gives the third sector — faith and voluntary organisations – a chance to play an important role in a collaboration with Local Authorities, schools and even local businesses, all delivering joined up services. In this way the hub is stoking community cohesion. Moreover, while delivering wrap around support, the hub can remain a “soft access point” where parents and children can “loiter without intent”.
Centre for Social Justice, A United Nation, 2024
We need to be supporting Family Hubs. I feel so passionate about this… In my Family Review… I looked at the role of family in children’s lives. Children and families spoke about how sometimes things could get too much to deal with and that they needed more intensive support from services…. whether that’s debt, joblessness, other problems. But too often families felt these services weren’t designed for families, but actually designed for individuals who exist in isolation. And that’s the error and that’s what we need to get right. They want services to understand them, to be non-judgmental and to be there for the long term, to be like family. And that’s why I love Family Hubs.
The Children’s Commissioner, Dame Rachel de Souza, 2024
Family hubs are key sites where early intervention takes place so that families can overcome difficulties and build stronger relationships. Crucially, they also network buildings, state services and other organisations providing family support in an area. Family hubs are now official government policy and are being rolled out across more than half of local authorities in England.
Lord Farmer, Founder, Family Hubs Network, 2024
Family hubs in particular offer an important universal access point to support for families, and will be critical to providing support both to families who are eligible for universal support (and might additionally be receiving a more intensive offer through Family Help), as well as families who have lower levels of need but still need help.
Josh MacAlister, Independent Review of Children’s Social Care, 2022
I see family hubs as being ‘Sure Start+++’. We are building on what we learned from Sure Start by extending it beyond 0–5 to include the whole family.
Will Quince, Former Children and Families Minister, 2021
It has been recognised since the founding of the welfare state that lack of family support undermines the ability of health and education to transform children’s outcomes. These early steps in the development of a national network of family hubs are a vital, if long overdue, acknowledgement of this lack. Building on them is an essential policy goal which all political parties can get behind.
Dr Samantha Callan OBE, Director, Family Hubs Network, 2024
Family Hubs play an important role in improving early intervention support, facilitating integration and data-sharing among public services and enabling voluntary sector partnerships. The support that they give families fosters independence and resilience. While most Sure Start and children’s centres offer only early years provision (0–5), Family Hubs help parents and their children between the ages of 0 and 19. This is the right approach.
House of Lord Public Services Committee, 2021
We need family hubs right across the country so that parents can access that joined-up early support to help them overcome difficulties and build strong relationships. Family hubs do not replace children’s centres. Many local authorities still run these and integrate their work into the family hub network of buildings and services across an area. Family hubs do not deliver everything but are the access and connection points for families of children aged nought to 19, and up to 25 where there are special educational needs. They draw together all the family support available, which combats fragmentation of help and costly duplication.
Lord Farmer, Founder, Family Hubs Network, 2024

We want every community, in all four nations of the United Kingdom, to enjoy the benefits of Family Hubs, so all families who need support can access it.

The Family Hub Network:

Connects those running existing Hubs through the information provided on our website and our events.

Advocates the expansion of Family Hubs models by increasing awareness among national and local policy makers and commissioners.

Spreads the word about innovative and effective work on the frontline of family support.

What is a Family Hub?

Family Hubs are local support centres where families with children and young people aged 0-19 can access a broad and integrated range of early help to overcome difficulties and build stronger relationships. This is often co-located with superb early years health care and support, such as in children’s centres. Hubs are also springing up in schools, community centres and other places where parents feel welcome.

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Why do we need Family Hubs?

Raising children in the midst of other challenges is far from easy and families do not just need support when children are young. When early help is not available and parents have to struggle alone, children often have more physical and mental health problems, under-perform at school and are much less likely to fulfil their potential in other areas. Every year increasing numbers of children are taken into local authority care. More effective early intervention is needed in every community to reverse this trend.

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