When the Government announced on 6 July that Family Hubs would be opened in every council area in England, it felt – finally – like the national commitment many in children’s and maternal services have been hoping for. Years of piecemeal delivery, funding gaps, and the long shadow of Sure Start’s decline have left councils working valiantly with little strategic glue. The pledge to embed a consistent model of early help and multi-agency support for families is both overdue and necessary.
However, like many national announcements, the devil is in the delivery – and the speed at which we move from pilots to embedded practice will be the test.
The Family Hub concept, in theory, is excellent: a single access point where families can get support for everything from midwifery and breastfeeding advice to school nursing and parenting classes, co-located and community-based. Ministers say the ambition is to reduce parental stress, boost maternal mental health, and provide integrated help from pregnancy to the teenage years.
Yet what we have learned from the pilot areas – and indeed from the wider history of local service delivery – is that goodwill alone does not make integration work. Without the right digital scaffolding, Family Hubs risk becoming well-intentioned but overburdened buildings rather than transformative access points.
Innovation Must Be Local, Not Just Central
There’s an unfortunate tendency in central government to treat local authorities as the problem rather than the partner. Yet some of the most exciting solutions in this space are being developed by or with local systems. One standout example is Essential Parent, a locally customised digital platform already supporting families across Greater Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, Cheshire & Merseyside and parts of London.
Essential Parent is not just a content platform; it is a digital infrastructure for family support. The apps provide access to evidence-based information in over 200 languages, support appointment management for midwifery and health visiting, and help integrate service offers across the 0–19 Healthy Child Programme. It’s not “tech for tech’s sake” – it is a targeted, evaluated solution with real-world impact.
Indeed, Health Innovation Manchester found that Essential Parent not only helped address inequalities in access due to language, ethnicity and deprivation, but delivered a £4:1 return on investment. That is the sort of economic evidence Treasury officials and council finance directors alike should take seriously.
It’s not just economic. The platform’s content is co-developed with respected organisations like UNICEF UK BFI, RCOG, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, Refuge, and Samaritans – giving it the clinical and community credibility many national tools lack. It has also already been showcased in Parliament as a case study for digital support in women’s health.
So why is it not everywhere?
A National Roll-Out Needs More Than National Ambition
The reality is that digital adoption in local authorities remains patchy – slowed by procurement red tape, capacity issues, and, frankly, the fear of getting it wrong. But with this new national mandate, councils have a window to act decisively. Rather than building everything from scratch or leaning into untested in-house portals, they should be learning from the places that have already done this well.
This is not an argument for off-the-shelf tech; it is an argument for collaborative infrastructure – tools that can be customised, embedded, and integrated with local priorities. If councils are to use Family Hubs to genuinely reduce demand on crisis services, digital tools should be seen as a multiplier, not a bolt-on.
It’s also about access. Physical hubs matter, but they cannot reach everyone. For families who move often, do not drive, or have language barriers, a locally tailored app can be the most consistent point of contact with a trusted system. In the same way the NHS app has become a gateway for millions, Family Hubs should aspire to the same digital accessibility.
A Call to Councils – and to Government
The new money for Family Hubs is welcome. The model is proven. But let us be clear: without digital integration, this will be another reform that flatters to deceive.
If we want these hubs to succeed, we must support councils to embed what already works – rather than reinventing wheels, piloting for the sake of it, or defaulting to the lowest-cost solution that fails families at the point of need.
Platforms like Essential Parent aren’t speculative. They are in use. They’re evaluated. And they’re waiting to be scaled. The onus is now on local leaders to ask not just what a Family Hub is – but how it should work in 2025 and beyond.
Final Thought
A national Family Hub programme gives us a second chance to get early years and family support right. Let us not waste it by ignoring the digital foundations that modern service delivery demands.
The Family Hub vision is not just about co-located services – it is about coherence, continuity and accessibility. In a world where most people bank, book GP appointments, and communicate with schools online, it’s no longer acceptable for family support services to exist in silos, both operationally and digitally.
Digital integration is not a ‘nice to have’ – it is the infrastructure that ensures equity, reach, and responsiveness. Without it, we risk designing buildings that look impressive on paper but fail to meet families where they are. The most vulnerable users – those facing language barriers, mobility issues, or low confidence in public services – are often the least likely to access physical provision unless it’s supported by accessible digital pathways.
The Essential Parent model shows us what is possible: customisable, evidence-based, multi-agency tools that connect families to the right support at the right time, in their language, on their device. It is the kind of innovation that helps a stretched health visitor make every contact count, that allows a single parent to get trusted advice at 2am, and that gives commissioners the data they need to understand demand and gaps.
If we are serious about this next chapter in family support, then we must design for the world as it is – not how it was a decade ago. Digital inclusion, service integration, and cost-effective prevention are not separate goals. They are mutually reinforcing. And without digital infrastructure at the heart of delivery, the Family Hub revolution will be one more promising reform that fails to deliver at scale.
Councils should be bold. Government should be enabling. Families deserve no less.
