Committee publication · Engagement document · 5 September 2025
First 1000 Days inquiry: Blackpool Visit Notes
From: Health and Social Care Committee
Inquiry: The First 1000 Days: a renewed focus
Summary
These are visit notes from the Health and Social Care Committee's First 1000 Days inquiry in Blackpool on 2025-09-05. The notes document meetings with Better Start leaders, family hub staff, and strategic stakeholders exploring early intervention models, school readiness approaches, health visiting transformation, and integrated care system coordination. Key themes include place-based commissioning, sustained funding importance, workforce investment, and co-production culture as drivers of improved outcomes in a deprived area.
Key findings
- Blackpool Better Start (12-year National Lottery funding) has embedded integrated early years services across health, education, and social care, achieving 67.2% good level of development at school entry (matching national improvement trajectory) through co-designed, place-based interventions rather than 'one-size-fits-all' programmes.
- Health visiting expanded from 5 to 8 universal visits since 2018; early parenthood triage service replaces Family Nurse Partnership; enhanced vaccination uptake (measles: 200+ children via community/home delivery, £25k spend) demonstrates effectiveness of place-level commissioning autonomy and integration with GP out-of-hours services.
- School readiness strategic group co-created 9-priority framework focusing on foundational life skills (listening, emotional regulation, hygiene, dressing) rather than academic readiness; Year 2 findings show increased home practice, improved parental understanding, and teachers unable to distinguish children who received support from those who did not.
- ICB integration challenges noted: £350m budget cuts exacerbate deprivation; structural shift from place to Lancashire/North Cumbria level has distanced decision-making; however, strong local examples of effective ICB partnership (maternity, mental health via Blackpool PaIRS and perinatal mental health services) show co-location and shared KPIs drive retention and service responsiveness.
- Workforce transformation via cross-partnership training (speech/language, mental health, trauma-informed, upskilling health visitors and school nurses) and daily hub meetings sustains 86% uptake of health visitor development programme; staff retention culture attributed to leadership, shared responsibility, and ability to access peer support within integrated teams.
Tone
FactualTopics
Key actors
Clare Law, Blackpool Better Start, Lancashire and North Cumbria ICB, Blackpool Council, NHS England, National Lottery (funding body), Paulette Hamilton MP, Jen Craft MP, Danny Beales MP
Notable line
“It's about a culture of teamworking and service user voice.”
Key Quotes
“It's about a culture of teamworking and service user voice.”
“Would like to delegate budget, resource and decision-making to be place- level. Sussex has done this.”
“Better Start will only support commission if ICB guarantees longer-term funding commitment (and not on a 2 year basis) because it is unethical to fund programmes that disappear after a couple of years and little is possible/feasible …”
“You can ask for help and someone will help pull something together.”
“Positive: teachers couldn't tell who had accessed the support”
“The BBS programme in Blackpool is used to fill critical gaps, not to fund new standalone projects.”
Source · parliament.uk record ↗