Will Quince – 2022 Statement on the Family Hubs Transformation Fund

The statement made by Will Quince, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education, in the House of Commons on 23 May 2022.

Today, I am providing an update on the first wave of successful local authorities to be awarded funding through the £12 million Family Hubs Transformation Fund.

The Government are committed to delivering on the Best Start for Life: A Vision for the First 1001 Critical Days Report, and on our manifesto pledge to champion family hubs. Family hubs are a way of joining up locally to improve access to services, the connections between families, professionals, services, and providers, and put relationships at the heart of family support. They bring together services for children of all ages, with a great Start for Life offer at their core.

Family Hubs Transformation Fund

The Family Hubs Local Transformation Fund is a key part of this commitment and is funded through HM Treasury’s Shared Outcomes Fund, which aims to test innovative ways of working across the public sector to address complex policy challenges.

We launched the £12 million Family Hubs Transformation Fund last November to support at least 12 local authorities in England to open family hubs. The fund will enable us to learn more about the process of local transformation, to build our evidence base, and to create valuable resources and learning for those local authorities moving to a family hub model in the future.

The Family Hubs Transformation Fund will support LAs with the costs of moving to a family hubs model. It is different and separate from the Start for Life and Family Hubs Programme that was announced at autumn Budget, the eligibility for which was announced in April as part of a £1billion Government commitment to families. The Start for Life and Family Hubs Programme includes additional funding for services, which is not available to LAs as part of the Family Hubs Transformation Fund.

The application window closed in December 2021, and we received 84 bids from upper-tier local authorities. The volume of applications shows a real appetite for change, and the high quality of bids reflects the passion and dedication to delivering for children and families.

The first wave of successful local authorities are:

Brighton and Hove

Wirral

Stockport

Dorset

Solihull

York

Cheshire East

We expect to announce an additional five local authorities to receive funding through the Family Hubs Transformation Fund in the coming months.