Medway Family Hubs and Start for Life Gap Analysis

Task 

The Family Hubs and Start for Life programme aims to join up and enhance services delivered through transformed Family Hubs in local authority areas, ensuring all families can access the support they need. To support their implementation of the Family Hubs and Start for Life Programme, Medway Council commissioned TONIC to conduct an insights project to research the following aims:  

• Mapping – rate the level of the current provision using RAG (red, amber, green).  

• Insights – engage with parent, carers, guardians, and service users to explore their views on whether the current offer meets their needs and expectations.  

• Gap Analysis – identify gaps in the current offer benchmarked against the Family Hubs and Start for Life programme Guide. 

TONIC’s Approach 

TONIC engaged over 90 parents/carers and 25 stakeholders across Medway through the following activities:  

• Mapping – this was based on a collaborative assessment with Medway Council and 25 supplementary interviews conducted with key professionals such as, Family Hub staff and midwives.  

• Co design – TONIC facilitated a co-production workshop with the Medway Parents and Carers Forum to test our research materials, gain feedback, and ensure they were appropriate.  

• Insights – the TONIC team spent the equivalent of 10 days conducting site visits to each of the Medway Family Hubs to facilitate ethnographic observations, in-person focus groups and semi-structured qualitative interviews with 69 parents/carers. Additionally, via an online survey there was a further 23 parents/carer responses.  

• Gap Analysis – TONIC triangulated the findings from the Mapping and Insights work. From this, a number of gaps were identified (for example, areas that require action due to lack of provision), and corresponding recommendations were proposed. 

 Outcome 

A concise, written report was produced by TONIC, detailing the key processes, findings, and recommendations. In addition, TONIC produced a live action plan to be used by Medway Council to track recommendations, and created slide decks to visualise the findings from each of the project aims.  

Key findings from the project with their corresponding proposed recommendations were grouped by the following four themes:  

1. Positive Feedback: Many described the Family Hubs as welcoming and said they provided them with a safe, comfortable, and nurturing environment, where they could socialise and form connections with other families. Feedback suggested that the Family Hubs could regularly gather feedback from parents/carers and strive to incorporate more co-design in order to develop and strengthen the service.  

1. Accessibility, Inclusivity and Outreach: Parents/carers highlighted the barriers to accessing the Family Hubs experienced by those from minoritised backgrounds and from rural communities. To address this, Medway Council could consider strengthening relationships between the Family Hubs and third sector partners, faith groups, and ‘by and for’ organisations.  

1. Holistic and Whole Family Support: Participants emphasised the need to expand the offer to cater to children of all ages and all members of the family. This could involve implementing specific activities for dads, young/teenage parents/carers, and first-time parents. 

1. Information, Advice and Guidance: Parents/carers described the groups as an ideal opportunity for signposting and information sharing. It was recommended that Family Hubs could provide education and training on basic information and guidance for all practitioners and volunteers to ensure knowledge is consistent. In addition, practitioners should be encouraged to actively signpost families to all of the services available.  

TONIC added value to this project by collating parents/carers details, where we were given consent to do so, for Medway Council to facilitate future consultation and co-production.