Families visited the Best Start Family Hubs for the first time along with those who regularly join sessions enjoyed fun afternoons of crafts, games and activities as well as having the opportunity to take home a free children’s book at the St Mary’s event.

The event in St Mary’s brought together the Best Start Family Hub, the Young Carers and the Family Help teams. This collaborative working directly supports Southampton’s Best Start in Life programme and its aim of teams working together to get support to families faster.

Families described the event as fun and well organised, with lots of activities and plenty of staff available to support them.

The Clovelly Best Start Family Hub event formed part of a suite of positive activities aimed at young people and families in St Mary’s as part of the Building a Brighter Future project. Building a Brighter Future is a partnership initiative aimed at improving outcomes for the people who live, work, or visit the St Mary’s area of the city. It aims to do this by working collaboratively to create safer, stronger, and more inclusive neighbourhoods. It focuses on long-term change – not short-term fixes. It is about improving places, building trust, and creating real opportunities.

Best Start Family Hubs play an important role in Southampton’s Best Start in Life programme which supports children and families from pregnancy through to starting school. It focuses on the crucial first five years of life and aims to make sure families get the right help, at the right time, in the right place, with support available earlier and services working better together.

Local parents and carers helped develop the programme’s vision, with an emphasis on support that is inclusive, local, welcoming and easy to access. Community feedback will continue to help shape its priorities.

Councillor Amanda Barnes-Andrews, Cabinet Member for Children and Learning at Southampton City Council, said:

“Our Best Start Family Hubs do fantastic work engaging and supporting local families. The event at Clovelly Best Start Family Hub showcased how the team work collaboratively across children’s services and provide fun activities for the children attending. It is especially lovely to hear the children did not want to leave and were able to pick up a free book to take home.”

Best Start Family Hubs provide advice and support to families, and opportunities to play and learn for young children, with seven locations across the city offering sessions and help for every aspect of family life. Families are also able to access a wide range of free online and in-person parenting programmes.

Feedback from families is an important part of shaping the support available. The team values hearing from parents and carers and has launched a new User Satisfaction Survey at Southampton’s Best Start Family Hubs.

The survey gives families the opportunity to share their experiences, say what works well and suggest where improvements could be made.

Find out more about local sessions and support on the Best Start Family Hubs webpage.

Find out more about Building a Brighter Future by searching ‘building a brighter future’ on the Southampton City Council website.