Parent-Infant Foundation responds to the Health and Social Care Select Committee report: ‘First 1000 Days: a renewed focus’
22 January 2026
We are grateful to the parliamentarians on the influential Health and Social Care Select Committee who have called on Government to support the expansion of Family Hubs with “sustained and ringfenced funding”.
As the Committee say, “Previous research on the benefits of the Sure Start Programme clearly set out the long-term benefits and financial returns of such an investment and would directly support this Government’s ambition to give every child the best start in life.”
In our evidence to the Committee, we flagged that £73m each financial year would enable every local authority area to develop at least one parent-infant team. This would mean 39,200 vulnerable babies could receive specialist support every year by 2028–29. Parent-infant teams support and strengthen relationships between babies and their carers, which can positively impact both babies’ development and parents’ mental health. This is the first time that we’ve seen a whole section of a Select Committee report dedicated to ‘Parent-Infant Mental Health Services and Early Attachment Services’. We welcome this recognition of how important parent-infant relationships are.
The Committee observe that, “Perinatal mental health is as important as physical health, with poor mental health outcomes having potentially significant long-term consequences for both the mother and child.” They add, “Given that the Government’s new investment is available only to the original 75 local authority areas this will struggle to address the need identified by witnesses.” We share this analysis and will continue to press government to fund the roll-out of Start for Life/Healthy Babies services to every local authority.
To avert problems we are seeing now – where local areas are starting to re-focus on older children – we back the Committee’s call for government to, “..confirm the funding arrangements for new areas and when it plans to issue guidance to those areas on services for children between the ages of 0 and 2.”
Read the full report here.