We wanted to understand more about how, when and why different families with young children engaged with different services. We were particularly interested in understanding the journeys of families who had access to the Flying Start programme in Wales. This programme included additional health visitor appointments, extra parenting and speech, language and communication support, as well as funded part-time childcare for children aged two. We were interested in how families engaged with different services within the Flying Start programme – and other local early-years services – and in understanding what we could learn about the difference this makes to children’s developmental outcomes.

We developed this project in collaboration with the Cardiff Early Help team and worked in partnership with different teams and services across the local authority to plan and deliver the project.

If we could understand families’ journeys through Flying Start services – drawing on data as well as families’ own lived experience – then we would be able to identify key moments that could be used to increase engagement.

If we knew more about why some families engaged with services and which services made the most difference, we could more effectively plan and design services to optimise engagement with those families and reach those who did not currently engage.

We knew that engaging with local early-years services could make a real difference to children and families. But we knew less about the journeys that different families make through different early-years services and how engagement with different services at different times might affect children’s outcomes.

• Are there key moments when intervention and support can make a real difference?
• Are there times when some parents and carers are particularly open to support  from services – or when that feels less useful to them?
• What facilitates engagement with support and what creates barriers for different families?

By understanding more about how, when and why parents and carers engage with different services and support, we hoped to be able to identify ways of both increasing engagement and designing services to increase impact for families with young children.

This was a short project through which we aimed to better understand opportunities for innovation and collaboration with the Cardiff early-years teams.

We took two distinct but complementary approaches to help us identify ways of better understanding family journeys through early-years services. This approach drew on Nesta’s expertise in both data analytics and lived experience research.

This focused on a collaborative data audit with key staff who use data to support early-years work in Cardiff. We also looked in particular at two key datasets linked to the Parenting and Flying Start services to see if we could identify useful research questions to help us better understand families’ journeys through services.

We worked closely with a small number of parents and carers from two areas in Cardiff. We explored with them when, how and why families engaged with the different services on offer, what worked from their perspective and what could have been better.  We explored their individual journeys through early-years services, as well as bringing together findings to identify common themes, patterns, positive experiences and any pain points.