Early Help support for Haringey families following £3.8m funding boost for Family Hubs & Start for Life Programme

Children, young people and their families in Haringey are set to benefit after the council agreed to participate in the national Family Hubs and Start for Life Programme which could see Haringey receive up to £3.8m funding to develop up to four family hubs in the borough.

This quartet of hubs will help to ensure Haringey children (especially from 0-5 years of age) and their families receive early and continued support to overcome any difficulties, develop and thrive. There will be a focus on building stronger relationships with workers to better help address health, education and care problems before they escalate.

Key aims for the Family Hubs programme are to work closely with the council’s health, education and voluntary sector partners and invest in Early Help support for families to care for babies, children and young people and help reduce education and health inequalities, as well as improve cognitive, emotional, physical and social outcomes here in Haringey.

Located across the borough, with some services being offered in locations near to the central hub building, the hubs will deliver a broad range of services that are readily accessible and available to help support babies, children, young people (0-19, or up to 25 with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities/SEND), parents and carers.

Haringey’s family hubs will be co-designed and developed in collaboration with our partners as part of a national programme jointly funded, supported and overseen by the Department for Education and the Department of Health and Social Care.

Haringey Council’s Cabinet Member for Children, Schools & Families, Cllr Zena Brabazon, said:

We’re delighted to have been selected among 75 upper tier local authorities by the government to deliver these facilities as part of the Family Hubs and Start for Life programme.

We’ve rightly put our provision for children and young people at the very heart of this administration and the forthcoming family hubs are further evidence of that clear commitment to our very youngest residents and their families.

We’ve already begun a number of engagement events to begin co-producing the delivery plan for this programme with young people, their families and our partners. I’m looking forward to charting the progress of this project in the weeks, months and years to come.