Our model focuses on providing capacity to support those who work with families to better collaborate and work in a more joined-up way, weaving resource together from across a community and using data and evidenced-informed approaches to support parents. We focus on reaching parents and carers where they are, ensuring the help they need is available to them beyond the confines of the family hub building. This approach, enabled by Stoke City Council in partnership with Thrive at Five, has been critical to the development of the Bentilee family hub offering, enabling the hub to fulfil what it was intended to be.
When Thrive at Five first started working in Stoke-on-Trent in 2021, the building that is now the Bentilee Family Hub (BFH) was known as the “Treehouse Children’s Centre”. Due to funding reductions and then the pandemic, the family support offer was fairly limited (though some services continued to be offered throughout the pandemic) and engagement was low. Between 2021 and 2023 Thrive at Five worked to establish relationships across the community. Projects were co-designed with nurseries and schools to support children’s transition to school and their early language and communication. New parent, baby and toddler groups were established in response to high levels of parental loneliness. Parent Connectors were recruited and started working in the community.
Drawing on the in-depth knowledge, relationships, and trust the Thrive at Five local backbone team had built during our discovery process and across the two years since, we started reaching out to and engaging with the community. The team leveraged the connections they’d built to bring in experts and professionals from across the voluntary and early years sector, and provided the extra capacity needed to plan, implement and monitor activities. The transformation of the hub into a warm, friendly and engaging space for families to come to had begun.
How we reached and engaged with parents and carers was critical, drawing them in through carefully designed communications, community events and the pivotal role of Parent Connectors as listeners, advocates and influencers who help us to engage with the parents and carers of babies and toddlers. Parent Connectors made sure they were everywhere that parents were, meeting them at school gates, at breast feeding clinics and GP surgeries to get the word out. We also worked alongside the seven nurseries and schools we’d established partnerships with to get information to parents and capitalise on their trusted reputation. This combination of communications and relationship building enabled us to support our partners to change perceptions about the hub, design activities based on our Parent Connectors knowledge of what parents wanted and needed and then to build engagement among parents with these new activities as they started running.
In September 2023 the first parent, baby and toddler (PBT) group launched at the BFH – Fun Friday. Over 20 families attended which, at the time, was 125% of the capacity available.
From here, we followed our test, learn and refine approach. Combining insight gained from the needs of the families coming to the BFH, from schools and partners across the community and our knowledge of the evidence-based interventions, we worked alongside partners to expand the support offer, ensuring we were reaching parents right from pregnancy to five. We also ensured that the activities offered were universal as well as targeted, and were as much informed by the views of parents as they were evidence-informed. We used data and insight to look at what provision was needed and built in a process of evaluation from the get-go.
“I find the groups amazing for help and support in all day to day tasks and activities for my daughter. There is always someone there to ask a question to whether that’s education related or health advice on who to chat to or seek more help and advice from.”
– Parent
“The baby group has helped my baby girl to explore new experiences within a friendly and welcoming environment. I have found that by having the play group available to us we’ve connected with other parents and guardians and have been able to share advice and experiences which as a first-time mum is invaluable.”
– Parent
Noting the high proportion of very young babies among the families who had come to Fun Friday, we supported the hub team to launch Babbling Babies. Through conversations at this group we quickly realised that there was a need for more engagement with parents during pregnancy and in the first months after birth. Our first free, baby shower event for pregnant and new mums welcomed 33 families to celebrate pregnancy, take part in activities and meet practitioners, statutory and voluntary, who could answer questions about every early step on their parenting journey. Noticing mental health was a significant area of need, we suggested bringing in Mothers Mind – a local initiative supporting mothers with their mental health. They now run a drop in coffee shop on the same day as Babbling Babies, removing a barrier to access by meeting mothers where they already are to ensure they get the support they need. Most recently, we’ve worked with the Health Visitors from Midlands Partnership Foundation Trust (MPFT) to help them start a weekly drop-in clinic for babies, allowing families the chance for regular check-ups and weigh-ins for their little ones in addition to the mandatory Health Visitor appointments.
Today, the BFH is a source of holistic support to families, including non-stigmatised advice and a wide breadth of provision spanning everything from access to food and hygiene banks, to debt and benefits advice and peer mental health support. Recognising that the BFH is not in pram-pushing distance for some families, it has been important for Thrive at Five to also support the expansion of more accessible support in other places in the community. There are now groups running every day of the week in churches and schools, as well as in the BFH. Parent Connectors are there to welcome newcomers, provide advice and signposting support. By creating an ever-growing network of more joined-up support and PBTs, parents report feeling more supported, less isolated, more informed and more connected to services and each other.
Our backbone team in Stoke-on-Trent provide critical capacity and independence that has, and continues to enable us to leverage all the assets in the community and create an integrated and cost-effective approach to support.
There are now 14 services running out of the hub, spanning statutory and voluntary services, running evidence-based interventions to support children’s development and help ensure they are ready for school. Doing this requires as much of an emphasis on pregnancy to three as much as three to five, and the support offered in the hub reflects this. There were over 18,000 visits to the hub in 2023.
“Having Family Hub, MAT and Thrive at Five coming together has created a cohesiveness and network that has been far more impactful than if these things were operating in silos. Thrive has shown how different institutions can work together and create a cohesive strategy that’s got a good evidence base and impact data.”
– System leader