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Family Hubs Task Groups

Seldom Heard Groups

Lincolnshire County Council are proud to have been selected as one of 75 local authorities to benefit from the Government’s ‘Family Hub’ Programme. Family Hubs were championed in the Government’s 2019 manifesto, and the Programme is hosted by Department for Education (DfE) and Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC).

The Programme stems from clear evidence that identifying risks early and preventing problems from escalating means better long-term outcomes for children and their families. It aims to address this by providing a focus on the first 1001 days in a child’s life as well as ensuring all families can access universal services and advice and guidance in a welcoming local ‘hub’. Therefore, Family Hubs aim to make a positive difference to parents, carers and their children by providing high-quality, joined-up, whole-family support services from conception, through a child’s early years until they reach the age of 19 (or 25 for young people with special educational needs and disabilities). This is at a Universal level.

Family Hubs are not new buildings, but adapting how and where we deliver information, advice and help to make it more welcoming and accessible for all families, particularly when they need it most. They are a place-based way of joining up locally in the planning and delivery of family services. They bring services together to improve access, improve the connections between families, professionals, services, and providers, and put relationships at the heart of family support. Family Hubs offer support to all families with a specific focus from conception to two, and to those with children of all ages, which is 0-19 or up to 25 for those with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), with a great start for life offer at their core. For more information please head to Family Hubs and Start for Life programme – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).

We are actively building relationships and connections with wider partners, and this is one example of what we mean by this.     We value all your experiences, skills and knowledge and wonder if you may be able to offer a person from your team(s) across the county to join us on task groups to discuss ways forward to gain a view from, what we have identified, as our seldom heard groups (SHG). We have no doubt many more groups will also be identified as we work through our next two years.

The initial groups set up will be.

  1. Military Families
  2. Dads and male role models
  3. EAL and BAME
  4. Home Educated
  5. Farmers
  6. Kinship carers

We have worked with Better Births and Shien to seek feedback already.  

As we continue our journey through Family Hubs, we now have the three Community Development Officers (CDO) in Post as of May 15th. They will be key to gleaning the views on the ground. The process we will be following is outlined below. What am is setting myself up for I hear you say or wonder? As you can see below, we would only need them to attend three meetings over a period of six months. There will be one main task group for each  group, and then the CDO’s will pop out into the community and ask the questions set up within these groups. It is not envisaged that other people will have any extra work other than to share knowledge within the three meetings. We will offer a hybrid approach to the meetings, however for meeting two we would invite you to join us at a local Family Hub.

The process we will follow (for now) is shown below.

  • Meeting 1 – Needs assessment – research/professional opinion (discussion fact fining kind of mission, CDOs and I would then look at the information and any questions from the first meeting) 
  • Meeting 2 – Outreach plan – develop questions for SHG share these and agree start date to enter into the community.
  • Family Hub Development Officer – Carries out relationship building events to seek views with young people and families.
  • Meeting 3 – Analyse findings, update outreach plan, changes to practice/services across the FH Network. (All regroup for findings and CDO will have a plan for each area to aid discussions and together join and link services)

Please contact sam.white@lincolnshire.gov.uk  by the 26th of May so invites can be sent out. Please let Sam know which group you would like to support and if you would like to be a facilitator of the meetings and discussions.

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