New early years service for Birmingham families

A revised plan for the delivery of a consultation on a new and fairer system for providing early years health and well-being services for children and families in Birmingham has been published.

The new system, which will be delivered by Birmingham Community Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust (BCHFT), will be fairer and easier to access than the current patchwork of services, bringing together the current health visiting service and children’s centre services. This will create a network of community-based services around local early years’ hubs.

According to the council, the system will be planned and delivered at district level in order to connect with local communities even though it will be city-wide.

There will be a minimum of one hub per district providing access to a full range of services, and there will be community locations and well-baby clinics where families can access a range of services.

BCHFT will deliver the new service in partnership with Barnardo’s, Spurgeons Children’s Charity, St Paul’s Community Development Trust and The Springfield Project.

Brigid Jones, cabinet member for children, families and schools, said: “We were faced with huge budget cuts from central government that meant we had to make big changes to the service. Coupled with this was the need to address underperformance and inconsistency of our service; not enough children reach a good level of development by the time they start school and some of our most vulnerable children do not access services, or don’t get good enough support from them.

“We've chosen to make the best of the budget we've got left by focusing on what the public told us matters most, which is staff and services rather than bricks and mortar. The result of this is our new community based model, with an increased range of access points going into areas we haven't reached before.”

Gareth Howells, nursing and therapies director at Birmingham Community Healthcare, said: “As a partnership working to support all aspects of health and wellbeing for pre-school children and their families in communities throughout Birmingham, we are committed to ensuring continuing provision of universal services of the highest quality.

“Our aim is to ensure that all of Birmingham’s children are healthy, happy and well prepared to start school, and support Birmingham City Council’s vision ‘to give every child in Birmingham an equal chance to have the best start in life so they can achieve their full potential’.”