National Centre for Family Hubs conference: opening plenary by Josh MacAlister on setting the scene

Abi Miranda (Chair) - Head of Early Years and Prevention, Anna Freud Centre
Josh MacAlister - Executive Chair, What Works for Childrens Social Care

Josh discussed the findings from the independent review of Children’s Social Care, commenting that the findings highlighted the need for a radical reset in how we support children and families. The successes of Sure Start were drawn upon to provide evidence of what has worked in the past and what should be built upon with the message that building back Childrens Centres/Family Hubs needs to come with a higher level of rigor and a focus on evidence regarding a number of features. These features being: the who, the where and the what. Josh details the research behind developing these features, such as:

· stepping up our use of robust population needs assessments to design the services that we offer children and families in the future.
· the need to embed multi-disciplinary working and decision making at the highest level through to the frontline and that the results of a randomised control trial showed that simply moving people into different buildings and expecting dramatically different results didn’t work

Josh concluded that the use of best evidence approaches and interventions needs to be hardwired into a new system, in the future to summarise an unrelenting focus on child outcomes. To measure these outcomes is the surest road to building back Sure Start, whilst avoiding the mistakes of the past and ensuring we provide services that better guarantee the human flourishing that children and families deserve.