• Centre for Young Lives publishes FOI request data from 80% of local authorities in England showing nearly half (49%) of councils report cuts to their budgets for children’s centres and Family Hubs between 2023/24 and 2024/25. The survey provides the most complete, up-to-date national picture of children’s centres and Family Hubs funding. 
• The data reveals recent spending on children’s and Family Hubs by councils is just a quarter of that spent on Sure Start before 2010, and that children’s centres and Family Hubs are spending just over half of the average spent per hub under Sure Start. ‍
• ‍The report warns that the funding that does exist for children’s centres and Family Hubs is precarious and at high risk and warns that the Government’s Opportunity Mission will be harder to achieve without more investment in family support.

[.download]Download the report[.download]

A new report published today (Tuesday April 8^th) by the Centre for Young Lives think tank, draws on new Freedom of Information data from councils in England to reveal the current provision of children’s centres and Family Hubs, both crucial tools in the Government’s mission to widen opportunity and boost school readiness. The Centre for Young Lives received FOI returns from 80% (121) of local authorities, and is provides the most complete, up-to-date national pictures of children’s centres and Family Hubs funding. 

Today’s report, ‘A Fresh Start for children and Family Support: Delivering joined-up place-based support through Family Hubs’ shows how the landscape of children’s centres has been left decimated and threadbare after more than a decade of cuts. It reveals that in 2023/24, spending on children’s centres and Family Hubs by local authorities was less than a quarter of what was spent annually on children’s centres in 2009/10. 

It warns that funding that does exist for Family Hubs and children’s centres is precarious and at high risk, with almost half (49%) of local authorities reporting cuts to their budgets for children’s centres and Family Hubs between 2023/24 and 2024/25. Local authorities in the Yorkshire and Humber region reported reducing their budgets on average by 10% reduction. One local authority is cutting its budget by 81%, which is likely to leave many children and families with nowhere to turn for extra support.

The research also shows how the number of centres has fallen, and that their volume and depth of services and support has also decreased over the last 15 years. There are now an estimated total of 2,100 hubs and centres across England, at an average spend of £275,000 per hub, just over half of the average spend per hub under Sure Start.  This spending is funded through a mixture of non-ring-fenced funding from local authority finance settlements, the pooling of other local budgets in some places, and some welcome additional funding from the Government’s Family Hubs and Start for Life programme.

The report argues that the benefits of place-based children and family support are well evidenced and desperately needed. Children who experience persistent disadvantage leave school on average 22.9 months behind their peers, and many children are arriving at Reception year way behind the level of expected development. The percentage of children with a good level of development is lowest for those who live in the 10% most deprived areas. This is compounded by the shortage of good early years provision, which is well evidenced to play a crucial role in supporting successful development in young children, including their social, emotional and physical health, their language skills and their behaviour. 

Over half of children who were deemed not ‘school ready’ performed below expected in their Key Stage 1 ready assessment, compared to only 6% of children performing below expected who were deemed school ready. Children deemed not school ready are nearly 2.5 times more likely to be persistently absent from school, increasing to over three times when considering persistence absence over several academic years, and children who were not school ready are around three times as likely to be not in education, employment or training (NEET) at 16-17 years old. 

Recent evaluations by the Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS) on the short- and medium-term impacts of Sure Start have found that children that lived within a short distance of a Sure Start Centre during the first five years of their life performed 0.8 grades better in their GCSEs. The impact for those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds or ethnic minority children were much larger. Research also shows Sure Start ensured greater support for children with SEND at young ages and reduced the need for EHC Plans (EHCP) in older children. Another study by the IFS found considerable benefits in reducing youth crime from joined-up family support through Sure Start, and access to Sure Start has also been shown to have a positive impact on child health, preventing over 13,150 hospitalisations each year for children aged 11-15.

The report argues this evidence makes clear the value and need for early intervention, and calls for:

• The Government to secure the future of existing joined-up children and family support. The Department for Education and Department of Health and Social Care should fund a ring-fenced grant to local authorities to fill the current gap in local authority funding and secure the future of existing family support.
• The Government should scale up investment through a ring-fenced grant to deliver joined-up family support to more children and families across England. The report recommends a phased and iterative approach to scaling up funding to children and family support, building over time to reach 2 million children in year nine. Phase 1, costing £1.2bn over the Spending Review period, would sure up existing local authority budgets and scale up investment first to reach 200,000 and then 500,000 children in the final year of the Spending Review period. Phase 2 calls for scaling up investment further over the following five years to reach 2 million children with £2.26bn of investment in year nine.
• The Department for Education should issue new guidance on the core provision of children’s centres and Family Hubs, as was the norm during the 2000s. The report recommends the Cabinet Office leads a cross-departmental taskforce to maximise the role of Family Hubs and children’s centres as a springboard for a wide range of government policy. This should be supported by cross-departmental guidance encouraging the delivery of a range of new services from high needs to universal through children’s centres and Family Hubs. 
• Every local authority we engaged with in this first phase of research emphasised the benefits of greater integration with health at a local level. Local authorities and health services should work together towards stronger integration, including data-sharing, co-locating services and pooling budgets. The report also recommends that additional investment in the Family Hubs budget continue to be jointly funded by both Department for Education and the Department of Health and Social Care.

Baroness Anne Longfield, Executive Chair of the Centre for Young Lives, said:

“It has been more than a quarter of a century since the first Sure Start centre opened and many of the challenges children and families face today are even greater than they were in the years leading up to that landmark programme. Since 2010, early help and family support programmes have been hollowed out.

“The Government has a target of ensuring 40,000-45,000 more children reach a good level of development before the end of this Parliament to reach its Opportunity Mission milestone, yet almost half of local authorities have told us they are having to make cuts to their budget for children’s centres and Family Hubs. This should be a serious cause of concern for Ministers. 

“The current spend on integrated place-based support is insufficient. A national network of joined-up family support, providing crucial help and support to families most in need, requires new investment and a long-term drive and determination from the heart of and across Government. 

“We need to mend the patched-up, underfunded, postcode lottery that currently exists. We need a fresh start for family support.”

ENDS

[.download]Download the report[.download]

Notes to editors:

1. The report is available here.
2. Supported by Impact on Urban Health, the Centre for Young Lives has undertaken this initial research – the first of two briefings - to understand the state of provision of place-based, joined-up early intervention and family support in England today. With the support of economists at LSE Consulting, we are also presenting the scale and duration of investment needed to reach the families who need it, especially those with highest need, through a deepened and expanded rollout of hubs across the country. In our second paper, to be published later this year, we will look more closely at the nature of provision across the country and make recommendations about how best practice can be learnt from and built upon to enable all children to have the opportunity to thrive. 
3. On 20 December 2024, the Centre for Young Lives sent a Freedom of Information (FoI) request to all Upper Tier local authorities (London Boroughs, Metropolitan Districts, Unitaries, and Counties) in England asking about their budget and spend on children’s centres and Family Hubs in 2023/24 and 2024/25, as well as the number of children and families they support, and the types of services provided. A copy of our FoI questions can be found in annex A.
   
   We received returns from 80% (121) of local authorities. This is an excellent rate of return and to our knowledge our data give the most complete, up-to-date national picture of children’s centres and Family Hubs funding at the time of writing. A considerable amount of financial and other information was provided, although not all returns provided all the requested information, and neither did all the information provided come in the same format or with the same level of completeness. In the analysis below, therefore, information about any one specific issue has been marked with the number of authorities where their return provided a clear response in relation to that issue. In table one we set out the numbers and percentages of responses we received which had usable information, broken down by the main types of Upper Tier authorities (and using ONS totals of all upper tier authorities, but excluding City of London). Of the 121 upper tier local authorities that responded to our FoI, we received data on their spend for children’s centres and Family Hubs in 2023/24 from all 121 local authorities, as shown in Table 12. We also asked about budget for the previous (2023/24) and coming financial years (2024/25) and received complete responses to this question from 116 local authorities. From this data we were able to conduct analysis on budget changes, including those local authorities who are cutting their budgets for family support between 2023/24 and 2024/25.  In March 2025, we spoke to nine local authorities, and two non-local authority children and family support providers across four of the five regions in England, with a spread of at least one of the four different types of upper tier local authority. We asked them about the nature of their provision of children’s centres and Family Hubs and sought further data on the running costs of the core provision of their children’s centres and Family Hubs, as well as the reach of their hubs.