EARLY HELP COLLECTIVE

Building upon Collective Learning about the limitations of past family support programmes, the collective’s approach is to create a collaborative early help network that consists of civil society organisations who create spaces for families with young children to support each other, and as a normative context to connect with maternity, health visiting, and early help supports. This approach aspires to the proverb “it takes a village to raise a child.”

The purpose of this new approach is to improve population-level outcomes in the Borough, and specifically to tackle the stubborn indices of deprivation that exist, long-term health inequalities, and short-medium term impact of the cost-of-living crisis.

If your enquiry is about a referral please contact the Family Hub Family Navigators on familynavigators@lbbd.gov.uk

For all other enquiries please email the Start for Life and Family Hub Development Manager Julia Bleet on Julia.Bleet@lbbd.gov.uk

Since BD_Collective was established, it was agreed that around 40% of the £100,000 grant from Barking & Dagenham Council would be used for ‘development’. This now makes up the ‘network pot’ and we will use the ‘Open Collective’ platform to distribute funds. This is a public platform and available for anyone to view.

The BD_Collective Leadership Teams have agreed the criteria and process for sign off which is detailed in this pdf: Network-Pot-distribution-Nov-22