Between 2023 and 2025, the National Literacy Trust partnered with the Department for Education to use a place-based approach to boost the Better Health Start for Life campaign and the early language support it offered to families.
This initiative successfully embedded Better Health Start for Life messaging and practical tools to support early communication and language development into family hubs in 75 local authorities.
By collaborating with local partners, training community volunteers and practitioners, and delivering tailored resources and campaigns in areas of need, the project successfully strengthened early support pathways and the early language support available to local communities.
Key achievements
- Engaged all 75 funded local authorities and collaborated with 295 family hubs and over 1,500 local and regional partners across all nine English regions
- Distributed over 117,000 printed resources
- Reached over 1.2 million people online through campaign content, including 20,172 resource downloads
- Trained 142 early years Literacy Champions to strengthen local capacity
- Held 327 face-to-face family events delivered in collaboration with family hubs, VCFS groups and local authorities
- Delivered 69 regional meetings and 4 national webinars to 435 participants, where best practice was shared and cross-sector collaboration facilitated and embedded
Key outcomes
By the end of the project:
- Almost all parents said they were very likely or likely to chat more with their child (98%) and very likely or likely to read, sing and play more at home (96%)
- 4 in 5 (81%) of the parents who attended series of early learning sessions said they learned something new
- Parents gained access to local resources, developed new language-supporting routines and supported parent-child interactions
- 9 in 10 partners (92%) better understood how to support early language and the home learning environment
- 4 in 5 partners reached new families (82%) and used more community spaces and assets (78%)
- More than 7 in 10 partners worked more closely with their communities (76%), and worked more closely local organisations (72%)
- Almost all volunteers who worked in communities reported being more aware of how to improve literacy in their community (99%) and said they had modelled positive literacy behaviours to families (96%)
- Around 9 in 10 volunteers agreed that they gained a better understanding of the importance of literacy (90%), helped families access resources to support the home learning environment (93%) and have themselves shared content about the home learning environment with families in their community (86%)
The Start for Life campaign has demonstrated the power of integrating national strategy with local insight and assets to strengthen local support pathways. Building on these successes, the partnership between the National Literacy Trust and Better Health Start for Life has been extended for another year to build on and scale current benefits. As we look ahead, we will use the insights we collect to continue to shape how we work with communities to give every child the best possible start in life.