Birth to Five Partnership pilot update

As many of you will be aware we have been running a pilot project, funded through national investment for a time-limited period. Our Birth to Five Partnership (BFP) pilot project came to an end on 31 October 2023, so we wanted to provide an update on some of the key outcomes and next steps.

Now the pilot has come to an end, we are busy collating feedback from both the BFP lay chairs and all the families and carers who took time to give us their views – as well as focussing on our next steps. A summary report outlining the projects highlights, challenges, and key learning points will be produced and circulated to all project partners in November 2023. In this way we hope the insights gained during the pilot can be used to inform and improve future engagement around service developments.

The project was set up to better understand how families, commissioners, and community children’s service providers (health visitors and therapists) can work together to review and coproduce local children’s services. Focussing on using the Maternity Voices Partnership model for service user engagement, we have successfully produced some valuable insights and learning. For example:

• Understanding how cultural awareness can impact levels of engagement
• The importance of shared goals to help deliver clear outcomes (including value for money)
• Identifying engagement models that can reach more diverse communities.

Surrey Heartlands ICB will be taking forward learning from the pilot to help develop future community services engagement.

Work has already started on embedding some of the valuable learning and good practice the pilot produced. This includes:

• Coproducing educational resources - digital and face to face perinatal information
• Embedding cultural awareness – events to inform how we can respect, listen, hear and support
• System wide discussions – around improving service user health literacy through improved information and easier navigation.

We would like to thank everyone who took part in the pilot for their time, expertise, lived experience and enthusiasm over the past two years. We know this was a massive undertaking, on top of already busy lives and workloads.

Surrey Heartlands ICB is committed to the principle of co-design and co-production leading to meaningful service user engagement. It has been heart-warming to see this matched by so many volunteers, community groups, and professionals.

Yours faithfully

The Best Start Team