A Better Start - a community rich with energy, learning, and hope

When I joined A Better Start in 2021, I stepped into a community already rich with energy, learning and hope. By then, the programme had already built strong foundations. Coproduction was embedded, innovation was encouraged, and families were leading change in powerful ways. My role in many ways was to help carry that momentum into the final chapter and beyond.

What struck me most about A Better Start was not just the scale of its ambition, but the depth of its values. Funded by The National Lottery Community Fund, the programme was more than a collection of projects. It was a call to reimagine early years support by centring community voice, shifting power, and listening deeply to lived experience.

How I describe A Better Start and what it achieved

I describe A Better Start as one of the most important investments in early years in recent UK history. It put long-term funding and trust into the hands of communities to try differently. Not just to fix problems, but to ask better questions about what children and families need to thrive.

In Southend, it meant supporting parents to become leaders and co-designers of services. It meant shaping systems that listened more and dictated less.

It meant working across sectors such as: 

• health
• education
• social care
• community 

This helped to build an environment where families didn’t have to fight to be heard.

We saw:

• increased school readiness
• improved parental wellbeing
• stronger uptake of preventative services
• more confident practitioners, willing to work relationally rather than transactionally 

We also saw a city supported to weather the impact of a global pandemic. But the true legacy is cultural. We helped shift the conversation from “what’s wrong?” to “what’s possible?”

What I learned from the programme

Even as a leader with experience in children’s services and community organisations, A Better Start taught me lessons I’ll carry for life.

Firstly, that coproduction is not a one-off exercise, it’s a practice. It’s not just inviting parents into a room, but sharing ownership of decisions, resources, and direction. When done meaningfully, it transforms not only services but systems and enables a full range of diverse thought.

Secondly, I learned that time and trust are the most valuable currencies in early years work. Lasting change doesn’t come from quick fixes or top-down strategies. It comes from building relationships, holding space, and letting families lead at their pace.

Finally, I saw the importance of:

• legacy planning
• starting early
• listening to what must continue
• creating structures that allow learning to live on

That thinking became central to the next chapter.

How I'm applying that learning now

In 2022, I moved fully into City Family CIC, the legacy vehicle created to carry forward the work of A Better Start, Southend. As co-founder and director, I wanted to make sure the values, insights, and connections we’d built didn’t disappear when the funding ended.

City Family delivers inclusive, early help support in South Essex and parts of London. It provides support from pregnancy through adolescence. We work with families who are often furthest from traditional services, like: 

• young parents
• kinship carers
• families in poverty
• or people with lived experience of trauma and exclusion

We applied learning from A Better Start’s early years work to drive further change support across the age ranges.

Everything we do is shaped by what we learned during A Better Start. Our parenting education programmes are co-designed by local families. Our 6 day helpline was created in response to what parents told us they needed. Our team includes people with lived experience at every level, from volunteers to senior leadership.

Later this year, we’ll open Willow Reach, Southend’s first residential family centre. It’s designed for families on the edge of care. It will offer parenting assessments in a trauma-informed, supportive environment. It’s another direct outcome of A Better Start thinking. Do things differently, design with, not for, families, and challenge systems to be more humane.

About A Better Start

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Read learning updates from across our programme.

A Better Start is a 10-year project set-up by The National Lottery Community Fund, the largest community funder in the UK.

Five A Better Start partnerships based in Blackpool, Bradford, Lambeth, Nottingham and Southend are supporting families to give their babies and very young children the best possible start in life. Working with local parents, the A Better Start partnerships are developing and testing ways to improve their children’s diet and nutrition, social and emotional development, and speech, language and communication.  

The NCB is coordinating the ambitious A Better Start's NCB-led learning and evidence programme for ABS, disseminating the partnerships’ experiences in creating innovative services far and wide, so that others working in early childhood development or place-based systems change can benefit.