Wednesday, 21 October 2026
The Institute of Health Visiting (iHV) has welcomed a new report from the Centre for Young Lives, "Starting Well: Putting health at the heart of early childhood", which calls on the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) to match the ambition shown by the Department for Education (DfE) in supporting babies, young children and families, with greater investment in child health prevention, early intervention and health visiting services.
Published yesterday, the report argues that improving child development, reducing inequalities and achieving the Government’s mission target to ‘create the healthiest generation of children ever’ is not solely an education challenge. It calls for the DHSC to play a fuller role in delivering the Government's ambitions for early childhood, recognising that children's health, development and learning are closely linked.
Alison Morton OBE, iHV CEO, was invited to speak at the report launch, joining a panel of national leaders and experts including Baroness Gillian Merron, Minister for Women’s Health and Maternity, Sue Robb OBE, Government’s Best Start in Life Champion, and Heidi Fewings, Children’s Prevention and Early Intervention Lead, Humber Teaching NHS Foundation/ Hull City Council, to discuss the actions needed to give every child the best start in life.
The report's findings reinforce what iHV has long advocated: that investment in prevention during the earliest years can improve outcomes for children, reduce inequalities and help ensure families receive support before problems escalate.
In particular, the report highlights the importance of the health visitor’s 2-2½-year health and development review as a key opportunity to identify emerging needs before children start school. However, it notes that uptake varies significantly across the country and that pressures on the health visiting workforce have affected the quality and consistency of the review and subsequent support available to families.
The Health Secretary has pledged to ‘put the cradle back in the NHS’ and bring Sure Start health services back into every family centre. Healthy Babies is being expanded to every local authority - something the Centre for Young Lives has long called for. Today’s report welcomes this renewed ambition, calling on the Department of Health and Social Care to now build on this commitment and put health at the heart of early childhood support – and this includes rebuilding health visiting services and ending the current postcode lottery of health visiting provision.
The report presents the key themes for a strengthened 2-2½-year health and development review in a framework to support early identification and early support, to boost school readiness and give every child the best start in life. The framework is built on three core principles – and health visiting is central to achieving all three:
- Every child should be reached, particularly the most vulnerable;
- Every review should be done well, so that need is identified early; and
- Every review that identifies need should lead to a meaningful pathway of support.
The iHV is a member of the CFYL Early Years Advisory Group and involved in the development of the Framework.
The report makes several recommendations on how this can be achieved:
- DHSC should develop in partnership a national quality improvement framework for the review, for local authorities and their health partners to adopt and provide consistency and high-quality reviews to every child in every area – with a call for national guidance to define partners’ roles (including the contribution of health visiting, ending the current postcode lottery of definitions of ‘health visiting’ that make integrated pathways almost impossible to plan);
- DHSC becomes an equal funding partner: committing £500 million over the next Spending Review period to match DfE’s investment in Best Start Family Hubs, including funding for health visiting; confirming Healthy Babies funding to 2029; and protecting Healthy Child Programme funding within the Public Health Grant;
- DfE and DHSC place Best Start Family Hubs, Healthy Babies and remaining children’s centres on a single statutory footing, with a duty on local authorities and integrated care boards to commission them, under a national Sure Start brand; and
- DfE and DHSC should strengthen local integration to by creating the infrastructure local authorities need: a shared 0-5 common outcomes framework, joint guidance to align national policies and local implementation; and a national data-sharing mandate.
Commenting on the report and its launch, Alison Morton OBE, iHV CEO, said:
"This report rightly recognises that giving every child the best start in life is not just an education challenge, it is a health challenge too. We welcome its call for the Department of Health and Social Care to play its full part alongside the Department for Education in achieving the Government’s ambition to ‘create the healthiest generation of children ever’. Health visitors are uniquely placed to reach every family, identify needs early and connect children and parents to the support they need.
"The Healthy Child Programme provides the framework to improve health outcomes for children and families, but the ambition of the programme must now be matched by investment in the health visiting workforce and services needed to deliver it. Child health can’t be left to chance, or remain a political football based on the political colours of your local authority.
"We are grateful to the Centre for Young Lives team for adding further weight to the growing body of evidence on the importance of early childhood and the role that health services and health visiting play in improving outcomes for children and families. We hope this report helps drive the investment and action needed in health visiting to turn that evidence into lasting change."
Alison Morton OBE