Pregnancy and the early years are critical to children’s long-term development. During this crucial period, engaging with families to provide early help and support can ensure a wide range of positive outcomes.

Existing evidence from the UK and abroad, including Nesta’s new era of integration in the early years blueprint, points to both the range of support families and babies can benefit from, including during pregnancy, and the way the system around family support needs to work to make this as effective as possible. However, there are gaps in our knowledge about the current landscape of support for babies and young children in Scotland, and how this can be improved.

This project will aim to fill some of those knowledge gaps, and we will develop recommendations for what needs to happen next to support families during pregnancy and the first years of a child’s life.

This project will generate intelligence and insights about existing pregnancy and early-years support in Scotland. It will also make clear recommendations about what is required to change at the national and local level to strengthen and support practice and delivery which supports improved early child outcomes.

The Scottish Government has set out its intention to deliver improved outcomes for children in their earliest years and has set a target of reducing the percentage of children identified with a developmental concern at their 27-30 month to 13.5% by 2030.  

The primary approach for delivering these changes in Scotland is via systems of holistic whole-family support, which involves a range of partners working with families to ensure that they are able to access the support they need, when they need it and for as long as they need it.  

This approach is already fairly well embedded across strategic and delivery partners within Scotland, and there are many examples of systems working well to provide support to families. However, we think there are challenges across areas which can hamper efforts to bring effective support to families

By exploring the existing systems of support services, we aim to highlight good practice and opportunities to reduce any barriers that local areas face in providing the best support possible to families.

We will work alongside CELCIS to deliver this project. Key elements of delivery will include:

• undertaking a rapid review of existing evidence to agree which frameworks we will use within the project to describe what good looks like, in terms of the services that families need and how they are delivered
• carry out a sectoral wide survey with all 30 children’s services planning areas to understand more about their existing offer during pregnancy and up to a child’s third birthday
• develop “early-years data profiles” for all 32 local authorities in Scotland, including a range of data relevant to their early-years population
• carry out interviews with strategic leads at both the national and local level to understand their priorities 
• work in-depth with six children’s services planning partnership areas to explore their current landscape of support, and to consider what their future offer may look like.