Skip to content

Hertfordshire County Council

The future premises and service offer of the Family Support Service within Family Centres in Hertfordshire

Consultation start date: 18 July 2023

Consultation closing date: 10 October 2023 (11.45pm)

 

Introduction

Hertfordshire County Council’s vision and ambition is that every Hertfordshire child has the best possible start in life, and that they are given opportunities to:

  • Be happy
  • Be healthy
  • Be safe
  • Be resilient
  • Be ambitious
  • Be independent
  • Be included

As a County Council, we are responsible for providing a range of services for families, children and young people including Family Support Services and Public Health Nursing, as part of the Family Centre Service.

What is a Family Centre?

The staff in Family Centres work with local midwives, GPs, health visitors, family support, childcare providers, and community groups, to support children, young people, families and carers, providing a range of opportunities to deliver:

  • child and family activity sessions
  • outreach support
  • information, advice, and guidance
  • parenting support and courses
  • infant feeding support
  • adult learning
  • benefits advice
  • volunteering opportunities
  • information about getting employment
  • support to parents/carers of children with special educational needs and/or disabilities

 

Why are we consulting with you?

In 2024/2025, the Council’s contracts for the Family Centre Service are due to finish. There are two teams that make up the Family Centre Service: Family Support Services and Public Health Nursing. This consultation only focuses on the Family Support Service element which is contracted by Children’s Services, and Public Health, who contract the Public Health Nursing teams, will be consulting on those at a later date.

Children’s Services now needs to design how the Family Support Service will work from January 2025. To ensure a comprehensive approach, we will incorporate the perspectives of children, parents, caregivers, and other professionals, through this consultation process. We want to hear your thoughts about services for children. We are confident that together we can design a service that meets the needs of children, young people, and families, in Hertfordshire. This feedback will be used to develop a new service specification and to confirm which of the current buildings should remain for service delivery.

Between May and early June 2023, we asked you (parents, carers, staff, and partners) about your experiences with the service and what was important to you, now and in the future. You told us the universal non-judgemental group sessions were essential to both parent/carer and child, having services running in the community local to residents was valuable, along with being able to easily speak to knowledgeable and friendly staff for support. You also recognised the financial challenges facing services when retaining the universal offer.

 

As a result of your feedback, we are therefore prioritising the following:

  • retaining the universal group sessions but charging families who can afford to pay for these
  • reviewing the premises we use to make sure they are fit for purpose, can be accessed by local families, and offer flexibility
  • supporting all families, but especially those children, young people and families who need it most
  • looking at where there is overlap, duplication, or inconsistency across the current service
  • learning from what has worked well in other local authorities

However, difficult decisions must be considered when redesigning services to make the best use of public money, buildings, resources, and highly skilled staff. Based on your feedback, we will design a model for how the Family Support Service could work in the future.

What are we proposing?

To make sure that the most vulnerable children, young people, and families are getting the support they need. From feedback, we understand the value of the service to parents, and as such it will continue to:

  • provide support, information, and access to childcare
  • provide support to live healthy lives and have healthy relationships (e.g. antenatal support, parenting, infant feeding)
  • provide support for parents/carers to return to work, education, and volunteering
  • provide support for parents/carers whose children have special educational needs and disabilities (SEND)
  • provide information, advice, and guidance across a range of services and partners
  • promote public health messages (e.g. introducing solid food, promoting healthy lifestyles, emotional and mental wellbeing, supporting oral health)
  • include the family voice in developing the way services are delivered locally.

We intend to reduce the number of fixed Family Centre buildings which are not fit for purpose due to being too small, inaccessible, or in the wrong place, and instead allow the service flexibility to identify local community venues to deliver services as and when they are needed.

However, we will retain the 10 district bases where staff would all be located and continue to deliver services (e.g. stay and play sessions, breastfeeding support, baby clinics) and do their admin work. The 10 district baseswould have consistent core opening hours, with flexibility beyond those to meet service needs.

We want to retain the universal group sessions run by the Family Support Service as a priority, however, to make this possible it will mean a charge for some group sessions, but we will ask providers to offer a loyalty card scheme and concessions where appropriate.

We are building on the joint delivery between Family Support Services and Public Health Nursing, to provide clarity on roles which will help the service better distribute resources to meet community needs.

To use technology more effectively, by reviewing the online services and information available.

You can tell us what you think by:

completing our online consultation questionnaire on the link above.

completing our easy read document version of the consultation questionnaire and sending it to familycentres@hertfordshire.gov.uk.

picking up a paper copy of the consultation from one of the current district bases and leave it completed at the reception:

  • High Trees - Hertford Regional College, Turndford, Broxboune, Hertfordshire, EN10 6AE
  • Windmill - Broadfield Road, Hemel Hempstead, HP2 4DW
  • Selections - Welwyn Road, Hertford, Hertfordshire, SG14 2DG
  • The BECC - Shakespeare Drive, off Furzehill Road, Borehamwood, WD6 2FD
  • Oughton - Oughton Primary & Nursery School Site, Mattocke Road, Hitchin, SG5 2NZ
  • Sopwell - c/o Mandeville Primary School, Mandeville Drive, St Albans, AL1 2LE
  • Broadwater - Longmeadow Primary School, Stevenage, Hertfordshire, SG2 8LT
  • South Oxhey - c/o Oxhey Wood Primary School, Northwick Road, South Oxhey, WD19 6NL
  • Westfield & Littlebury - Croxley View, Watford, WD18 6NS
  • Creswick - Sir John Newsom Way, Welwyn Garden City, AL7 4FL

Staff within Children’s Services will be visiting families in the community by attending events over the summer.

If you would like help understanding this information, or if you would like it in a different format, please email familycentres@hertfordshire.gov.uk.

The consultation questionnaire is made up of three different sections:

a) Consultation on Family Centre buildings in Hertfordshire

b) Consultation on the way Family Support Services are delivered

c) Questions about you

How and when a decision will be made

Once the consultation has closed, a report with detail of the feedback we receive during the consultation will be presented to a joint meeting of Hertfordshire County Council’s Children, Young People and Families Cabinet Panel and Education, Libraries and Lifelong Learning Cabinet Panel in autumn 2023. Panels are made up of elected members of the County Council. The Panels will make a recommendation to Cabinet, the County Council’s decision-making body. Cabinet will decide whether to proceed with the proposals made in November. The results from the consultation will be published here: www.hertfordshire.gov.uk/familycentreconsultation 

Supporting documents

Rate this page