Childcare/education
Sure Start settings
Grants & funding
Inclusion
Health professionals
The knowledge and expertise of health professionals is key to the success of children's centres: they have knowledge of the community, they will have developed a relationship with local families, they will have access to local and family information and will generally be the first contact point for families expecting babies, with new babies or with young families moving into the area.
This approach provides a preventative model that needs to fully reflect the impact of early year's intervention in the protection and promotion of children and young people's physical and emotional health.
GPs, Midwives and Health Visitors provide a universal service to all mothers antenatally and for the first five years of life. They will already be working with families in the area and the challenge for children's centres is to ensure that they are fully engaged in the work of the children's centre so that any duplication or gaps in service to the family, from the family's perspective, are avoided.
Children's centres will need to work closely and seamlessly with health professionals that are already working with families, so that both health services and children's centres are able to utilise their resources to most effect.
It is important that families experience a joined up approach to family care that will lead to the promotion of the physical, intellectual and social development of young children so that they can flourish at home, when they get to school and during later life.
