Supporting children to enjoy the best start in life – learning from A Better Start
The UK Government has unveiled its refreshed Best Start in Life strategy, aiming to ensure 75% of five-year-olds reach a good level of development by 2028. The strategy outlines a comprehensive plan to improve early years education, make childcare more accessible and affordable, and strengthen support for families from pregnancy to age five.
A Better Start, well known as a pioneering programme focused on early intervention in communities which are experiencing disadvantages, has been actively sharing what it has learned over the last decade with policymakers, to make the case for targeted, community-led approaches to early years support.
Summit before the strategy
The Best Start in Life Summit, convened by the National Children’s Bureau (NCB), brought together around one hundred senior leaders from across the early years sector to shape the vision for improving outcomes for babies, young children, and families.
Held near Parliament, the event capitalised on renewed government momentum and the Prime Minister’s personal interest in early years support.
All five A Better Start partnerships, funded by The National Lottery Community Fund, were present to share evidence from their decade-long work, showcasing innovative approaches to system-building, community engagement, and partnership working.
Three priorities from A Better Start Southend
Dr Nia Thomas, Director of A Better Start Southend, highlighted three key learnings at the NCB Summit.
First, she emphasised the importance of listening to parents, advocating for mechanisms that prioritise parental voices in service co-production, backed by effective community engagement. She stressed the need to adapt services based on feedback and strengthen parental and community involvement.
Secondly, she highlighted the critical role of partnership working, urging organisations to collaborate effectively, share resources, and set aside egos to create a cohesive and unified system that supports families.
And finally, she called for consensus on the core needs of babies, children, and parents, such as safety, love, warmth, food, and shelter, as foundational elements for healthy development. Dr Thomas also highlighted the importance of effective communication, self-aware leadership, and sustained funding to foster innovation, inclusivity, and long-term impact. She urged for the insights from initiatives like A Better Start to be used to inform government strategies.
You can find out more in Nia's blog.
Blackpool Better Start – no "silver bullet"
Clare Law, Director of Blackpool Better Start, shared key insights from Blackpool with the summit, emphasising the transformative power of collaboration in achieving better outcomes for children. Clare also stressed the need to address inequalities, focus on the first 1,001 days of life, and consider wider determinants of health and wellbeing.
Drawing from Blackpool Better Start’s decade-long experience, Clare asserted that lasting change requires collective action across sectors, disciplines, and perspectives. She rejected the notion of a "silver bullet," advocating instead for creating strong foundations that enable policies and services to help communities thrive. The summit mirrored Blackpool’s approach by balancing research, data, and lived experiences while keeping children and families at the centre of discussions.
Clare also emphasised the importance of sustained funding to ensure long-term, sustainable action. She concluded that collaboration, diverse perspectives, and a shared vision can help create a system that delivers meaningful change for children, families, and communities.
Find out more in Clare's blog.
Lambeth Early Action Partnership – community-based improvement with joined-up systems
Sophie Woodhead, Assistant Director of Innovation and Systems at NCB, and previously Assistant Director of the Lambeth Early Action Partnership (LEAP), emphasised the need for cohesive, community-rooted systems to support early childhood development, integrating health, education, local government, the voluntary sector, and families. Sophie highlighted four lessons from LEAP’s work as part of the A Better Start programme:
- Inclusive governance: LEAP embedded ‘co-governance’, involving parents in decision-making through board participation, fostering accountability, and keeping families central to the Partnership’s work.
- Community engagement: LEAP shifted from labelling families as 'hard to reach' to meeting them in trusted spaces, using community connectors and parent champions to build relationships.
- Shared data systems: Integrated data systems enable professionals to track outcomes, plan support, and evaluate services effectively. LEAP invested in the development of an integrated data platform which aligned data across the early years support on offer. Find out more in this Research in Practice podcast.
- Strong partnerships: Collaboration across organisations led to integrated pathways between services like midwifery, health visiting, and mental health, alongside improved family spaces.
Sophie stressed that individual services alone are insufficient; a joined-up system is essential. She also stressed the importance of sustained funding to avoid cuts that disproportionately affect deprived areas the most.
Learn more about LEAP’s perspective in Sophie's blog.
Find out more about the Summit
The Summit demonstrated the sector’s commitment to the importance of early childhood development, and the evidence from A Better Start’s work was warmly received by the early years experts who attended.
You can find out more about the Summit in a series of blogs by the people who were part of it.
About A Better Start
A Better Start is a ten-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 National Children’s Bureau is coordinating an ambitious programme of shared learning for A Better Start, 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.
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