2024 – A year of great progress for babies

As 2024 draws to a close, we can report another successful year, with some excellent results for the babies, families and professionals we aim to support.

We saw an increase in the number of specialised parent-infant relationship teams and services across the UK.  We also engaged more politicians than ever before, encouraging them to ‘speak up for babies’ and influencing the new UK government.  Just this month these efforts paid off and the government confirmed additional funding for Start for Life services, including parent-infant relationship support.  We also navigated the change of government and departure from parliament of key supporters, to build new relationships and support formation of a new All-Party Parliamentary Group on Babies (Pregnancy to Age 2) . 

Our new Impact and Annual Reports (covering financial year April 2023 – March 2024) demonstrate how we have supported the growing network of specialised parent-infant teams and services. As of March ‘24 there were 46 established teams who meet our full definition of a specialised team, as well as 20 emerging teams. These twin reports show we extended our professional support further, with 10 local authorities in England receiving implementation support from the Foundation. Additionally, in Scotland we are working with the 10 health boards developing parent-infant services. And in Wales, our new Welsh development lead took up post, and began offering support to regional health boards.

This welcome growth in parent-infant relationship teams and services across the UK  means that hundreds more babies and families have access to specialist support and could get focused help with early relationships, mental health and wellbeing.

With an election looming, 2023-24 was a big year for our campaigning work too. In March, we supported the First 1001 Days Movement to develop and launch in parliament a ‘Manifesto for Babies’ calling on all political parties to address the decline in baby and toddler health. This included a recommendation to invest in prevention through programmes like Start for Life, with whose funding was due to run out in April 2025.

Infant Mental Health Awareness Week came in the run up to the General Election, so we focused on engaging candidates from all parties with our ‘Baby PM’ film and asked them to pledge to ‘Speak up for Babies’. We garnered support from over 80 candidates, more than 50 of whom became standing MPs.

With the new Government in place, we focused on those making the decisions, submitting evidence to the Budget consultation and meeting Ministers at party conferences.  With partner charities we wrote to the Prime Minister urging him to extend Start for Life funding. On 5 December our pleas were answered, and a further year of funding for the programme was announced, as part of the government’s ‘opportunity mission to give every child the best start in life.’ 

To end the year on a further high, we have also just lodged papers for the new All-Party Parliamentary Group on Babies (Pregnancy to Age 2). Chaired by Maya Ellis MP, the Group will work across political boundaries to champion the needs of vulnerable babies and provide constructive advice to government on early years policy.

We would like to thank all the teams who work with babies and families, our partners, supporters and funders for helping us achieve great things in 2024, and we look forward to working together to help babies and their families in 2025.

To see more highlights from the year you can view the Impact and full annual report here