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Best Beginnings is the podcast for everyone working in or caring about the early years. Hosted by George Looker, CEO of Babyzone, each episode brings together leading researchers, clinicians, practitioners, policymakers and parents to explore the evidence, ideas and innovations shaping how we support children and families in the UK.
From infant mental health and attachment to workforce challenges and systems change, Best Beginnings goes beyond the headlines to have the conversations that matter most in early childhood.
New episodes drop every Tuesday.
Best Beginnings is brought to you by Babyzone, a national charity operating free, evidence-based family hubs across England for families with children aged 0–5.
Actually be quite honest about your life. You can answer the door in your pajamas. You can tell them about really how difficult things are. Perhaps you feel stupid because you've tried to apply for a nursery place and you've come up against the wall. Perhaps you feel embarrassed because you've not been out of the house for four days and your children are going nuts and you're going you've got into a very difficult space and you're worried about being judged.
George:Welcome to Best Beginnings, a podcast from Baby Zone, where we talk to the people working hardest to give every child the best possible start in life. Today's conversation is about one of the oldest ideas in family support and what it takes to keep that idea alive in a moment when more families need it than ever. The idea is quite simple. A trained volunteer matched to a family in their community who turns up every week in their home and gives them something that can't be commissioned or prescribed. They give their time.
George:Home Start has been doing this for over fifty years. There are 9,000 of those volunteers across The UK right now supporting over 60,000 families each year. My guest here today, Jodie Reed, leads Home Start UK. And she came to the role having spent her career in government, in research, in the policy world, circling this question. What does a family in those first years really need?
George:Not on paper, but in practice. Today, I want to get underneath that work itself. What does it look like when it succeeds? What happens when it doesn't? What does it ask of the people that she works with, her volunteers each week?
George:Jodie, welcome to Best Beginnings. Thank you so much for joining us. Let's start with Home Start. What does a successful Home Start experience look like? You know, take me into that room where a volunteer is sat with a family.
George:What makes it work?
Jodie:Ah, well there is no one single answer and that's the beauty of it. It's about having that human connection, having someone who you get to know and trust and who walks alongside you and can actually understand, get under the skin of what it is that's troubling you or the strains on your life and help you navigate that.
George:It's so important that connection, where we sort of see we live in a very busy world. What is it that why does Homestart exist? Why is that connection not there organically in the community anyway?
Jodie:Yeah, well as you say it's over 50 years old so in a way it's not a new problem. It was always incredibly tough becoming a parent. Big life change often and can be very isolating. So if you layer on top of that other challenges in life whether it's due to your housing, your domestic situation, maybe your family live far away, it's always been that had that potential to be very isolating. But what we're seeing in modern life as you know is that that has sort of exacerbated and lives are polarising really.
Jodie:We've done some research recently which showed that around over one in five parents say they are with a young child say they rarely if ever meet another adult outside their household. So I think that is a modern phenomena and that's why it's that's why that connection, that humanity seems to be I mean the demand for our services is growing in that context.
George:Yeah, it was quite staggering. I read that Together Alone report that you mentioned sort of on family isolation. And, you know, again, what sort of stuck with me is it's getting worse rather than better and I sort of go, we've had the pandemic which was a hopefully once in a lifetime, once in a generation sort of event. Why do you think what's driving that one in five number? What's driving the increase in the challenge?
George:Because surely as you say everyone that has a newborn, everyone that's got young family, they need that help, they need that support. Why do you think isolation is on rise?
Jodie:Yeah, well I think it is a long term trend like a lot of the roots of rising needs on families on a number of different measures and most of those are trends which have been gone back to ten years at least with an uptick that happened around the pandemic. I think in that moment after the pandemic people thought this is all pandemic baby issue, this is all to do with that and it'll settle down and then it didn't. So it's a really interesting question and for me it begs the further question what changed at that point and for me what I see is rocket boosters put behind a number of different social trends. One of them is around our use of media and screens and how we interact and get our information and almost that sort of ability to live safely, reasonably contentedly without having that contact with others until it's not okay anymore and it's not safe. That sort of ability to turn, that inclination to turn inwards if you're already feeling under stress and duress is sort of facilitated in the modern world.
Jodie:And then the other one that I think of a lot is around our interactions with professionals. And the data is there, we know that people have less face time with their GPs, we know that health visitors have been under huge pressure for a very long time, again a big uptick around the pandemic. But even I think people talk less about childcare workers for example use of childcare is going up, of childcare in early education, but actually what I hear from parents often is that the space to interact and have meaningful conversations and get to know those professionals is more limited. So you know all of that is a little bit of a perfect storm for isolation.
George:Yeah and we hear that from the families that we work with baby zone each week and we hear about isolation, maternal isolation but also that struggle to navigate services to find out what's on offer in their local area even and find information that's valuable to them, even if that service may already exist. And I guess, you know, we look at we're a place based organization, we've got 11 hubs across The UK, you're, you know, you're really in the front room, you're in the kitchen with the families. Who's being hit the hardest? What is the sort of we sort of look at disadvantaged communities, we track sort of child poverty and obviously lots of statistics that are readily accessible about the rise again of child poverty. How do you make sure that your services go into those with greatest need and what are you seeing in those families that is shifting as well?
Jodie:Yeah, I mean so our data shows a number of trends. We know that around nearly sixty percent of parents who we support report having problems with their mental health. We know that about seventy percent are in families where there's no adult unemployment at a time. We know that also disproportionately high numbers of families reporting having issues with special educational needs, domestic violence as well. So all of those things do feature but like how do we know?
Jodie:How do we actually know that we're getting to the right families? That very much depends on it's hard to know until you're in the door. Think that's one of the things I'd say. Either in the door in the household or having contact with that family on an ongoing basis, forming the kind of trusting relationships which many baby zone workers I've seen today do as well. Really getting to know families over a period of time and then you know what's going on.
Jodie:In terms of the overall global levels of need, one of the challenges for us is being pulled very much in the direction of the most complex cases and that's because public services shifting that way, everything then shifts along to make up for that and we can see a real increase in the number of families with complex needs coming to our services. They might be in early intervention support from local councils and such. We're there for that, we're absolutely there for that, but what we're also really about is early intervention and I see as well that the level of need, know, it's almost those lonely families, the one in five, that I thought that has also increased so everything's been on the rise. You need to be quite discerning and families change in a huge amount in that period as you know when a baby is small so really getting under the skin to make sure one doesn't get to the other.
George:Absolutely and I think what fascinates me about your model is obviously I think I mentioned in the opening 9,000 sort of volunteers. Let's walk in their shoes a little bit. What draws them to want to go and support Home Start and be a volunteer as part of your organisation? But also, do you see them doing that's different perhaps to a statutory, you know, account someone from the council or from a sort of a healthcare visitor team? What can they do that's different?
Jodie:Really good question. Really good question and something I'm learning about every day as a sort of new a new co CEO at Home Start. I've had the privilege of going out and meeting a lot of volunteers in their communities. Mean, what draws them in is a sort of is that actually is a modern wonder because we've got, as you said, we've got 9,000 volunteers and that's not as high as it used to be but the number of hours they're giving collectively is, in fact it's greater. And in a context where people have less time, there is does it's a really interesting question, is that why are people willing to give this amount of time?
Jodie:And it's a couple of hours a week, at least that's what it takes to support a family. There's a few different groups if you start to break down the volunteers that come forward. Traditionally we had a lot of older women whose children had left home, some at retirement points as well who really wanted to give something back and had that wisdom from being parents themselves and those are still a really really important group for us. We also see families whose children have just gone to school and there's a sort of moment where maybe slightly deludedly you think you're going to have some more time and we've got a kind of large cohort of mums and dads actually who come forward and say they want to give something back at that time too. And then we also have, I mean I think this is an interesting space for us in the context of shifts in society, we also have other groups who are particularly interested because they want to go on to a career in social work or in therapy.
Jodie:So Home Start used to be very strictly about parents supporting other parents but we're actually thinking of more creative ways and then we have got some other groups as well who are engaging so that's why you want to join.
George:That's brilliant and I think you know we know how hard it is to get volunteers you know people as you say are very busy, less people that economically can afford to volunteer their time so it's amazing that you're able to still have that level of support and I guess one of the things that I'm sold, I've seen Home Start in lots of our baby zones and I love the relationships you have with their families. One of the things that I look at in a world where we will have to scrutinise inputs and obsess about outputs and measure every single piece of work that we do, I guess you make the case for something that probably is less measurable. It's about someone's time, it's about connection, you said earlier. How do you respond to the question around measurable outcomes versus you've got to see it to believe it, you've got to see the families with their Home Start volunteer or the work that you can do in the community.
Jodie:So we have a lot of data from the parents that we work with. We always survey them and ask them how they feel at the end of a project and over 90% say they feel more confident, more capable. So there's a lot of soft data we can get from the words of parents themselves which I think that's valued maybe more than it was in the past. Parents also tell us over 90% that they're more involved in their child's development at the end of a Home Start journey. And I think that that is very tangible for volunteers.
Jodie:Our funders are interested in that. But our volunteers are interested in the immediate returns they see when they're working with those families and that's often what keeps them hooked in. So they often tell us they feel really proud to be part of the Home Start movement. They feel really proud of the work they do and they have that satisfaction from seeing. It's quite an empowering experience actually to be a volunteer because you go on that journey with family.
George:Yeah I think that's right and I think I'd love to sort of pick your brains, we spoke briefly beforehand around your role within the Department of Education and how that sort of has led you to what you're doing now. And I guess you you were there when the free childcare offer was being designed and deployed and you know I think around you know the role of the voluntary sector alongside the Department for Education, the role of seeing childcare, nurseries, and obviously they're going to have a free offer that's available for under fives, but where does Home start, where does the charitable sector fit alongside all of that? Don't know if you've got a point of view of how you'd like to see the government supporting charities and other voluntary organisations?
Jodie:Yeah, I mean I think we've got government now who are very encouraging of the community and voluntary sector and talking a lot about and encouraging in speeches etc encouraging local authorities to engage with organisations like Baby Zone and Home Start and all I think that's partly driven by necessity if you like. We're not money's not money's not aplenty and I think the government understands that to reach into communities it needs to be of communities and it needs to be connected well. So yeah, sort of to come back to your question, just to link that up with your question before about the unique value and what it is that voluntary sector can deliver that professional services or interventions find it hard. From a family's perspective it's often about not feeling like it's cookie cutter support, not feeling like there's not someone there with a clipboard who has a very limited amount of time who will make you a referral and then disappear out the door not have the even if they're a lovely person not have the ability to follow-up or connect with you and just not have the ability to build that relationship over time so that you feel confident you can actually be quite honest about your life you can answer the door in your pajamas and you can tell them about really how difficult things are.
Jodie:Perhaps you feel stupid because you've tried to apply for a nursery place and you've come up against the wall. Perhaps you feel embarrassed because you've not been out the house for four days and your children are going nuts and you're going like you've got into a very difficult space and you're worried about being judged. So I think that is a kind of a unique place for the voluntary sector, especially where it works with volunteers bringing people in who can walk alongside families in a way that professionals as well meaning and as brilliant as they often are, they just don't have the space or the framework to do that. So
George:Yeah, and we often talk about closing the loop. So you're able to be there again, rather than just making referrals to elsewhere, you're spending time. So all they need is time, support, their guidance. So I think that's kind of remarkable in terms of the impact that your volunteers can have. But I guess you know you're also working with families that are in significant distress sometimes.
George:You know it must be very challenging circumstances that your team encounters and goes into. How do you help protect them? How do you help make sure that they're not taking a lot of the trauma or the baggage back home with them? What is in place to make sure that while, you know, they're seen to be doing great work, they're supported and able to continue to support families that are going through particularly acute kind of challenges at home.
Jodie:Yeah, I mean one of the strengths of Homestot is that it's a federation of local charities as you mentioned in your introduction. So know each of those 170 odd local charities will provide support all around both the volunteers and the support workers. Volunteers will have a coordinator who's their go to person and the support staff will have, you know, there'll be a local leader and board of trustees and they are there and provide the everyday handholding. But as a federation as well, we can do a lot to sort of wrap around and support volunteers and staff. So we do the we design the curriculum for the prep course that every volunteer goes on which will touch on things like resilience and managing difficult situations.
Jodie:We do an awful lot on safeguarding. And I think for a small charity it can be a risky business going into homes. And if you are completely working in isolation without that protection of being part of a larger network, you know, one thing goes wrong and it can take up a lot of time and it can ruin you as a small charity. As a federation, that training that we provide and we provide a lot of online support, local Home Start's also get together and consortia and different groups and provide peer support to one another. That can be really, really vital in terms of getting through those difficult times when you're faced with supporting families in really tricky situations.
George:Because I'm guessing not every match works, not every family is ready for support perhaps or they don't have the space. Guess what happens then when the volunteer is trying to spend time with a family and you know someone's perhaps not ready for the support and the help, how would you know what's the next step look like or is there I guess there's no one size fits all kind of output?
Jodie:Yeah I mean do you know what, I feel it here extraordinarily few stories of the match not working and I think that's partly because the process of matching is very human as well. So often volunteers will come in for training with staff who then get to know them through the training, they'll know the families, they'll have interviewed the families and they'll put people together with people who they know work for them. Having said that, it is a complex world, we've just been talking about it. Families needs are greater but they're also more dynamic and shifting. And so now Home Start is much more than home visiting.
Jodie:We still have that as the core of our model. Every Home Start across the country has volunteer home visiting, but most Home Start's also offer groups for families. They offer professional support if a family comes in through the door and you don't feel that it will require someone a little bit more skilled and someone from the team usually a local, usually like someone from the local area, often someone who started as a volunteer themselves and then joined the organisation will go out and provide that family with support. In that way it's a bit of a no wrong door model, right? So families and we also hear that for some families they don't want to let people into their home first off.
Jodie:Other families don't want to go out the house. So just having those variety of opportunities and for us as well that's one of the reasons we love working with Baby Zone because that just increases the interfaces that we have with the community and the possibilities for children, for families to find us really through the route that works for them. It might be that they want to only attend a group for a period of time, but over time they build that trust and they have a conversation that leads to yes, I would like a volunteer to come every week or it can happen the other way around.
George:Yeah that's brilliant, that's sort of to say building that connection over time wherever families are, wherever you need them and sort of touching on, we've sort of spoken about the fact that it's over 170 charities in one. I guess what have you seen in your sort of I think we were we were both came into our respective leadership positions at the same time. What have you seen that's consistent I guess across the the 170? But also what is there that is completely kind of organic and you would never dream of trying to standardise across the network?
Jodie:Yeah, interesting. So it's a very diverse network. Like we've got organizations which are kind of £100,000 organizations to organizations which are, you know, six, seven million organizations within our across our network. I mean, the thing that they all do is they all do the home visiting, they all have our support around safeguarding, they all have our support. We do a number of other kind of collective things which help deliver their services professionally and efficiently and we support them with their branding and their outreach.
Jodie:But in terms of the actual model that they offer, most are doing groups and offering that professional support but some have gotten much further. So we've got home starts like in Greenwich where they're actually running all the large number of family hubs in Greenwich, providing nurseries as well and have that kind of beautiful journey for volunteers. Some of them are becoming nursery workers and then coming back and working in Home Start as coordinators. So there's that, that there's there's a kind of almost like a social enterprise model going on there and then we have Home Start's in remote parts of Scotland for example which are very small very community based very much one or two people at the centre who know everyone and we have lots of things in between. I think that diversity is also a strength for me from a policy perspective.
Jodie:I'm like great, this is a perfect place for innovation. This is a place where we can really test and we've got good data and we can push and pull and see who's surviving in the current context, who's thriving, who's challenging. Think about what we would never put against the cookie cutter approach, we'd never put a standard model, but we can think about what's working and what leads to a local home start being resilient and able to thrive and serve and support more families. So that's one of I mean we're already doing that and supporting innovation in terms of one of the areas is volunteer recruitment. But I'm really interested, me and Natalie Acton, my co CEO, very interested in how we nurture that and look at that more in the future.
George:Yeah, it's fascinating. Then in terms of that diversity, we touched on policy and sort of government's role here. Obviously, I think we both acknowledged and are encouraged by the governments, not just the mood music but the investment they're making in the early years and sort of Best Start in Life programme and the rollout of those family hubs across The UK. What would you be looking for as part of that programme in terms of diversity perhaps in different communities where a home start will want to interact with them. What are you looking for as part of the rollout of that programme going through the next couple of years?
Jodie:Yeah, So I think the sort of government narrative has really developed a long way in last year or so. Ministers like Olivia Bailey really understand the value of voluntary and community sector and have made it quite explicit in their guidance that they want local authorities to engage voluntary sector partners in the delivery of those services. However, making that a reality does require some deeper thinking really. Think a lot of the voluntary sector is used to being treated in a slightly kind of mechanistic way or do our outreach for us. Over the years Home Start had a lot of funding from Sure Start back in the day.
Jodie:That was pulled back. But often local services have lent on HomeStart understandably and our local charities have worked their socks off really to support and continue to be integrated in those services. But the funding needs to come, the ability to be commissioned needs to come and I think from the central government perspective it can look straightforward. We've told local authorities that they should engage with voluntary community sector. We've told them to value the things that voluntary and community sector do in their commissioning processes.
Jodie:But actually there's still a leap to take in terms of opening those doors, especially where their relationships don't exist. We find that in those local authorities where austerity bit hard on the early years and where maybe children's centres completely died of death, early years departments in local authorities became virtually non existent, Actually those relationships aren't there and some of our more local, especially smaller charities, they don't even know where to start with kind of getting access to that commissioning process and having that conversation. And then you know the actual process of going through it can take a lot of time and know where it's for a short amount of time or outcomes expected to be delivered in a short amount of time it's you can get into dangerous territory with your own sustainability as a charity. So I think there's a big conversation to be had if we're going to turn that engagement with the voluntary community sector into a reality about how you make commissioning work, how you make procurement work. And I think there's also a sort of constant message I'd like to hear from government about what parent support actually is and that it's not just a temptation to think of it as an intervention, something we'll do to families rather than the kind of support infrastructure that families actually of feel, these trusting relationships that we're talking about.
Jodie:That means it does mean taking a punt on something sometimes which doesn't deliver you very clear numbers in the way that evidence based interventions that have been touted a lot recently do, there's a place for them. They're brilliant programmes like Incredible Years, fantastic and a lot Home Start volunteers deliver those but most families they weren't engaged in those ever. They're the icing on the cake. For most of them their daily reality is where they meet other parents, the playground, the family hub, the baby zone, the people in their lives. And so I think there's a real need for government to think about how to harness that properly.
George:So I'm also really interested in your lockdown research around baby blind spots and how in a crisis the baby almost becomes invisible. What does that blind spot look like in reality? What does it look like structurally? I guess is it still there?
Jodie:Yeah, so interesting. So you're going back a few years now but one of the pieces of research I did before I joined Home Start was for the first one thousand and one days movement and it was coming out of lockdown. I think we thought we were coming out of lockdown at the time, we probably were still in at autumn of twenty twenty. Thinking about not just the impact of lockdown and the pandemic on babies, but trying to understand what it was about systems, local systems that had responded in a baby focused way and made the right calls for families. And it was again, we were talking about innovation and a hotbed, was really an opportunity to see how different local ecosystems rallied around families or not at that time.
Jodie:There was really striking differences in the extent to which health visitors were retained. For example, some of them went entirely online, some of them got completely dispersed to support maternity services or do other things, whereas others really kept that up and kept on the face to face visits even if they were at the end of a pathway. And what was really interesting is that when we dug beneath the decisions there they weren't usually just coincidence. They really were often a reflection of how well the local system and local authority and public health in particular had set up structures to focus on babies and young children in the first one thousand and one days, how well integrated they were and how effectively professionals were communicating across boundaries that served families. You know, like all of that is sort of quite well known.
Jodie:It's not in a way it's not earth shattering but I think that that that crisis was really a test of local systems and I think there is lesson there. That word baby blind spot we used in the report and sort of took off and it was used in parliament and But I think that's a test we should keep playing back to ourselves as a society.
George:Yeah, I guess the question is do you think we've learned the lesson? Do you think that we would be resilient if the situation was to happen again or something else was to confront families in a different way?
Jodie:So I was very excited when a year and a half ago now that Kirstjarma announced early years outcomes as one of its six milestone targets. Know I think there is a kind of there is that momentum to think about early years now and really hold it up there as something that's important. However, I think we've got a long way to go in the translation and I think there's still huge variability across local areas in the extent to which babies and young children are thought of and there's certain additional risks now in the system like the way we fund health services which actually set us up for more competition on funding with adult services and other pressure points which are real in the system but we've got to stay we've got to keep our eyes open on it really.
George:Yeah, thank you. Yeah, And I guess flipping to personal, so towards the end of the conversation, you've obviously lived and breathed in the government, the think tank world, IPPR and sort of also organisations like ARC and now Home I guess what's been the thread that's run through it and what is it that you know you've learned from all of that kind of background that's really helping you devote your energy to the cause that Home Start is championing?
Jodie:Really good question. I mean I think I came out of uni wanting to change the world like many of us do. And for me the way I can see ahead of me to do that was policy. And so that's been the golden thread really and I've always been interested in children and life chances, improving life chances and fairness. So that took me into education and childcare policy and early years perfect.
Jodie:It's a feminist issue, it's a life chances issue but when I had my own kids I had a moment of realising hang on this childcare offer that I've been working on is not a reality for me as a parent. And then I was when my eldest was eight months we moved abroad for a year and that was also a dawning reality that policy is not policy is not everything what I've lost here is my is my community. And so that's what's brought me first of all to take a step out out of working in Westminster and to work in local delivery with local authorities and with charities now.
George:I mean, so you've been that experience of moving to The US, you experienced that isolation yourself in a new community, in a new environment and I think that was very helpful for thinking about walking in the shoes of some of the families that you support. I'll probably flip to a quick fire round, if that's alright. I don't if you've got one word that you would use to describe a Home Start volunteer. Warm. And what is the biggest myth that you see around sort of families in crisis and the support that they
Jodie:need? So I think, I mean the biggest myth is the old one, they should pull their pull themselves up by their bootstraps, right?
George:And what would you say to potentially an incoming early years minister if there's a new government that's formed in the next few weeks? What would your letter to them when they walk through sanctuary buildings, doors and sit in their office, what would that contain?
Jodie:So keep going with early years. It's brilliant to see it back on the agenda and you know has more of a measure than on workforce development or getting mums back to work. Keep thinking about early years outcomes. Recognise that in today's world you need to harness the voluntary sector as part of that if you're really going to make a difference to children's knives.
George:And what gives you hope? We talk a lot about the challenges that families face and the difficulties raising funds for charities but what gives you hope?
Jodie:I mean I think what we were saying just before before weren't we that it's actually quite a good moment for early childhood in terms of the recognition that of how important it is. That wasn't there a few years ago. I think that the fact that brain science has come on, the fact that people are articulating the importance of what happened, that experience in the first five years of life to later life chances is really critical and it's just really exciting to see ministers and decision makers but also funders out there and really understanding that and within that also understanding the role of parents as a primary caregiver, first educator. If you get parenting right, if you support parents, then everything else, well not everything, most other things, the most important things fall into place.
George:Oh, well, that's a great message to close on. So, Jodie, thank you so much for joining me today, thank you for listening to Best Beginnings.
Jodie:Thanks for having me, George.
George:What I'm taking from this conversation is something Jodie said almost in passing, but stayed with me. The families that Home Start reaches aren't broken families. They're families that haven't been met yet. And that's the difference, and it matters. We see it at Baby Zone too.
George:Parents who arrive not sure what we're doing is for them, and not sure it's something they need to do. What changes everything isn't a program or a service. It's a person who turns up week after week, and is simply there. Someone you can build a connection with. Someone who you can build trust with.
George:There are 9,000 Home Start volunteers doing that right now across The UK. And it's not a stop gap while they wait for something better. It's something better for those people, for those volunteers, for those families. If you remember one thing, it's the families who find it hardest to ask for help, who are the ones who need it most. And the answer isn't always another service.
George:Sometimes, it's just a person and their time. Jodie, thank you so much for joining me this afternoon, and thank you for listening to Best Beginnings, a baby's own podcast. For more evidence informed support on babies and the early years, subscribe to this channel. If you found it helpful, please share it with someone who might need it. We'll see you next time.
George:Thanks.