The government has said the Healthy Babies programme will be rolled out to every Best Start Family Hub, extending a model that brings infant feeding advice, mental health support and help with parent-infant relationships together with existing maternity and health visiting services. According to the government announcement, delivery is expected across more than 1,000 hubs by 2028. For Policy Wire readers, the main policy change is not only wider coverage but a shift towards a single local access point. Ministers are presenting the programme as part of a broader attempt to group early years, health and family support together rather than requiring parents to navigate separate services.
The Department of Health and Social Care said parents will be able to access enhanced infant feeding support, mental health support and help to build strong relationships with their babies alongside midwifery and health visiting provision. The intention is that these services are offered through the same hub infrastructure already being developed under the Best Start model. That matters because, by the department's account, more than half of local authorities currently have hubs without Healthy Babies services. In practice, that means a family may have a local hub in name, but still need to go elsewhere for clinical advice, feeding support or early help. The expansion is designed to close that gap.
Ministers have explicitly linked the rollout to the principles associated with Sure Start. In policy terms, that points to early intervention, services located close to home and stronger links between health, early years development and wider family support. The announcement also sits within the government's wider neighbourhood health approach. The stated aim is to organise support around communities rather than institutions, with early years services and support for older people delivered in settings that are easier to reach. Local authorities, NHS partners and voluntary providers will now be expected to turn that approach into local operating models.
Alongside the family hub changes, the Health and Social Care Secretary said a new adult social care workforce plan will be published by the end of the year. The department said the plan will open more routes into care work for jobseekers, signalling that recruitment and retention remain pressing concerns as ministers continue work on a National Care Service. The government also announced what it described as the first national collective pension scheme for adult social care. If implemented at scale, that would give providers and staff a more standard retirement offer, and ministers are clearly treating it as part of the case for making care a more stable long-term career option.
The package also includes a commitment to appoint a new champion for unpaid carers. That is a modest institutional step, but it carries policy weight because unpaid carers continue to provide a large share of day-to-day support across England while often reporting that help is fragmented or difficult to access. The government has placed those measures alongside the next phase of work towards a National Care Service. Baroness Louise Casey's independent commission remains the main route for longer-term reform, with a report due by summer 2027. Until then, the immediate emphasis appears to be on workforce measures, incentives and visible support for carers rather than wholesale structural change.
On violence against women and girls, the government said the NHS response will be strengthened with £49.4 million for Integrated Care Boards over three years. The announcement describes violence against women and girls as a public health epidemic, a framing intended to move the issue beyond crisis response and into prevention, early identification and recovery. Of the total, up to £34.4 million over three years will go to 12 Integrated Care Boards for the first phase of the Steps to Safety referral service. The model is intended to enable women and girls experiencing violence or abuse to reach specialist support through their GP, using primary care as a routine point of access.
A further £15 million over three years will be directed through Integrated Care Boards to victim support services across England. The government has also said it will launch a targeted consultation on a national framework for a public health approach to violence against women and girls, covering prevention, early identification, support and recovery, and it plans to appoint a National Clinical Lead to reinforce the health system's response. Taken together, the announcements set out a broad service reform package rather than a single Bill or funding settlement. The common thread in the government's own framing is integration: family support grouped around hubs, social care reform tied to workforce conditions, and NHS action on violence against women and girls built around referral pathways and local system leadership. The next test will be delivery through local authorities, Integrated Care Boards and care providers within the timetables ministers have now set out.