Hammersmith and Fulham Council has launched its Best Start in Life
plan, a comprehensive strategy aimed at boosting child development and supporting families from birth to age 19. The plan, developed in collaboration with residents and partners, outlines key priorities and commitments for improving early years and family services across the borough.
The Best Start in Life
Local Plan 2026-2029 focuses on four main priorities: seamless service integration, healthier children, high-quality early education and childcare, and ensuring every child gets the right start in reception. The plan aims to achieve specific outcomes, including increasing the percentage of children achieving a Good Level of Development (GLD) from 71.5% (2024/25) to 79.4% (2027/28), and narrowing the GLD gap for children receiving Free School Meals to 66.1%.
Key initiatives include strengthening multi-agency integration across education, health, and community services, with a focus on early identification and intervention. To ensure 'seamless service integration,' the council plans to establish a strong Early Years Partnership to identify local needs, expand the core service offer through Family Hubs and partner venues, build an integrated frontline workforce with shared approaches, strengthen digital and data maturity, deliver targeted parenting and Home Learning Environment support, and publish clear, accessible pathways for families.
The plan also aims to improve health services for young children. Specific interventions include enhancing maternity and newborn care, reducing smoking in pregnancy, strengthening collaboration between midwifery, health visiting, and early years services, expanding infant feeding and breastfeeding support, improving Health Visiting services with weekend clinics, and enhancing digital access for appointment booking and health information. Vaccination uptake will be increased through targeted outreach and community clinics. Furthermore, the plan will support healthy eating through campaigns and nutrition programs, and reduce tooth decay through supervised toothbrushing and improved dental access. Expected outcomes include increased breastfeeding rates, more integrated and family-centred care, reduced smoking in pregnancy, increased uptake of mandated Health Visiting contacts, improved workforce resilience in Health Visiting, rising immunisation coverage, children making healthier food choices, and fewer hospital admissions for tooth decay.
For 'high-quality early education and childcare,' success will be measured by increased choice of good and outstanding provision, increased uptake of childcare entitlements, providers having strong quality improvement plans, and providers strengthening inclusive practice. The council will support providers with continuous quality improvement through leadership, training, and peer learning opportunities.
To support children transitioning into reception, particularly vulnerable ones, the plan includes improving early identification of needs and transition arrangements. Specific actions involve supporting all schools to use a consistent framework for assessing children's starting points in communication & language and personal, social and emotional development, embedding a borough-wide communication and language approach in target schools, and providing training and moderation for consistent Early Years Foundation Stage assessment. Progress will be tracked by target schools using a validated assessment framework, consistent communication and language approaches being embedded and monitored, widespread access to training and moderation, and an increase in GLD year on year.
Beyond the 'Good Level of Development' KPI, the plan will measure success through other indicators such as increasing the uptake of the 'Early Learning for 2s' entitlement, increasing engagement of targeted 3–4-year-olds in Evidence Based Interventions (EBI) parenting/Home Learning Environment programmes to 40% by March 2027, improving early language outcomes in target schools, increasing the completion of 2–2.5-year Health Visitor reviews to over 75%, and improving SEND navigation through dedicated specialists and clearer pathways. The plan also highlights the importance of co-production, with extensive engagement with families and partners to shape the services offered. These initiatives underscore the council's dedication to providing a strong foundation for all children in Hammersmith and Fulham. The full plan can be found in the Best Start in Life Local Plan.
