My tour of 14 Trail Blazer areas – those leading the way in rolling out the Family Hubs and Best Start for Life  -  recently took me to East Sussex to meet local leaders, practitioners and lots of families with gorgeous babies! After visiting both the Shinewater and Hailsham Family Hubs, it’s clear that a huge amount of support for pregnancy to two and beyond is already being offered in these wonderful, welcoming hubs.

At Hailsham we saw parents-to-be learning about everything from stages of development, choices about delivery, infant feeding, sleeping, crying, and about the emotional impact of a new arrival.  We saw others with their babies attending ‘time for me’ sessions where the empathetic help and advice on offer was very welcome! I was delighted to chat with a number of mums and dads, and it was wonderful to see how much they valued the friendships they’d built with other new parents as well as with the professional and volunteer support they were receiving.

From HV clinics to breastfeeding peer supporters to drop in playgroups, it really was a fantastic fulfilment the vision of a ‘one stop shop’ focussed on supporting families to give their baby the best start in life.