NSPCC Request for Proposal for Early Years Insights Work

Summary

Expressions of Interest for practice insights and service design consultancy

Following an Early Years Evidence Review in 2022, the NSPCC has been working on a new Early Years service development, provisionally called Family in Mind (FIM). We have an existing Early Years service for parents pre-birth called Pregnancy in Mind. Further information here: Pregnancy in Mind | Parental mental health service | NSPCC Learning.

FIM would provide holistic family support and a targeted parenting intervention for families with a child under 1 (at time of referral) where concerns have been identified around emotional attunement. There is strong evidence that getting this right in the first year of a child’s life has lifelong positive impacts on child outcomes (the reverse is also the case).

By targeted, we mean those families where there are vulnerable characteristics identified within the family. By holistic we mean a service which can address both the infant-parent relationship and the wider stressors on the family. Such hybrid service models are relatively untested, our hypothesis is that impact is multiplied and sustained if we address both the causes and consequences of vulnerability in the family.

Following an extensive literature review of evidence in this space (where there is very little UK evidence but some good global evidence around different models of intervention), we initially arrived at a service design model for FIM with the following characteristics:

• Early intervention service for families in the targeted selected bracket
• Whole family intervention (practitioners can observe and work with baby and parent(s)/carer(s))
• Home based delivery (in order to allow for whole family to be engaged)
• Support with emotional attunement delivered over approx. 26 weeks (evidence suggest this level of support is required to make a difference with this cohort of families)
• Family supported to access wider system support with stressors (possibly delivered by a volunteer community connector and to include welfare, housing, nutrition etc)

When we shared this model with our own practitioners in our regional hubs, they had concerns around need, deliverability and cost.

We’re looking to commission some further insights as detailed within the tasks below to enable us to have a clearer understanding of the gaps in provision and the current state of the system to fill such a gap.

Please click the ‘job description’ below for full details.