In December 2025, NCB convened its second Early Years Leaders’ Summit to explore how the Best Start in Life commitments can be translated into coherent, system-wide action. At the summit, Sophie Woodhead, former Assistant Director of Lambeth Early Action Partnership (LEAP) and Karla Capstick, former Director of Small Steps Big Changes (A Better Start Nottingham), explored learnings from embedding integration in Lambeth and Nottingham’s A Better Start (ABS) partnerships.
In this blog, they share insights on how collaboration, governance, and long-term investment can help systems work effectively for families.
Why integration matters
The early years system is complex, spanning maternity, health visiting, early education, mental health, voluntary and community provision, and wider local services. Families experience this as one continuous journey. When services operate in isolation, support is fragmented, access becomes unequal, and opportunities for early intervention are missed.
Through place-based programmes, ABS has shown that integrated working is necessary to improve outcomes for children and families. When systems are aligned, and practitioners share goals and data, families receive the right support at the right time.
Our approach
In Lambeth, a principles-led approach provided the foundation for integration. A co-created mission united partners, and working groups comprising parents, practitioners, community workers and early years experts identified gaps and developed programmes guided by proportionate universalism. This meant services were available to all, but scaled according to need, and delivery was responsive to local context.
In Nottingham, a shared vision and understanding were equally central. Across four distinct programme areas, partners agreed on core principles while adapting delivery locally. Integration required balancing data and evidence with flexibility to meet community needs, ensuring services were accessible, acceptable, and effective.
One of the most powerful enablers for integration was a shared outcomes framework and dataset. This shifted conversations from compliance to learning and helped everyone understand progress over time and collaborate to improve service engagement, availability and reach.
Embedding lived experience
Co-production was embedded across both sites from the start. Parents contributed to both service design and governance, providing continuity where statutory staff changed over time. This strengthened accountability and ensured services reflected lived realities.
Families shaped governance, commissioning, interventions, and communications, and became the public face of campaigns. This deep engagement improved accessibility and acceptability of services, and contributed to measurable outcomes, including a nearly 6% rise in Good Level of Development scores over two years in Nottingham A Better Start wards.
Shared governance and accountability
Integration relies on governance that supports collaboration rather than simply setting direction. In Lambeth, governance structures reinforced shared ownership. The LEAP board was co-chaired by the local authority and NCB, with parents as full members. Accountability was collective, and governance provided mechanisms for power-sharing, supporting leadership stability and cross-sector collaboration.
Nottingham established a layered governance model: a strategic board, an operational delivery group including voluntary sector providers, and hyper-local community governance. Parents joined the board from the outset, supported by training in finance, conflicts of interest, and governance. An independent, remunerated chair ensured impartiality and strengthened transparency. Governance also supported sustainability, enabling proactive planning for commissioning, ownership of products, and legacy arrangements.
Long-term investment and relational working
Long-term, flexible funding of the ABS programme created the conditions for genuine integration. A ten-year horizon allowed time to build relationships, align pathways, and develop shared workforce practices. It enabled partnerships to navigate pressures such as austerity and COVID-19 with shared problem-solving. Integration requires time; without sustained investment, collaboration risks being superficial.
In both Nottingham and Lambeth, relationships were foundational. Trust, transparency, and open communication broke down silos and managed scepticism. Communities remained constant even as personnel changed. Long-term funding allowed innovation, adaptation, and learning, supporting ambitious child development outcomes while responding to immediate system pressures.
From place-based learning to national reform
Giving every child the best start in life depends on systems that work together, not in parallel. Shared governance, co-production with families, commissioning that enables collaboration, and long-term investment allow systems to learn together. While these lessons are rooted in place-based work, the principles are transferable nationally.
Delivering the Best Start in Life strategy requires systems organised around families’ experiences as one continuous journey, rather than a series of disconnected services. The lessons from Lambeth and Nottingham show that integration is achievable when shared purpose, trust, and sustained investment are in place.