Labour expands Healthy Babies programme to all English local authorities

The government is committing £500 million to bring back a form of support for new parents that largely disappeared over the past decade. The Healthy Babies programme will expand to every local authority in England by next spring, reviving the core mission of Sure Start—a network of centres that opened in 1998 under the last Labour government and became one of its signature achievements before being largely dismantled during years of Conservative spending cuts.

The new initiative focuses on what research suggests matters most in a baby's first months: helping parents with feeding, supporting their mental health, and strengthening the bond between parent and child. These services will sit alongside existing health visits and midwifery care, woven into a system of 1,000 family hubs that will operate across deprived communities. The announcement came this week at the Labour conference in Liverpool, where Health and Social Care Secretary Yvette Cooper described the expansion as filling a gap that has left more than half of local authorities without dedicated Healthy Babies services despite having family hubs in place.

The original Sure Start programme became a point of pride for the Labour party that created it. One study found it generated longer-term savings worth twice what the system cost to run—a return on investment that made the case for early intervention seem straightforward. But the network contracted sharply after 2010, as successive Conservative governments cut spending on local services. The new policy represents an explicit attempt to restore what was lost, with Cooper expected to tell audiences that "one of the Labour party's greatest achievements" is being "restored to families throughout the land."

The programme carries particular resonance for senior figures in the current government. Angela Rayner, the housing secretary, has spoken publicly about how a local Sure Start centre changed her life as a teenage mother, offering her a parenting course that helped her and her son. Bridget Phillipson, now education secretary, worked closely with the first Sure Start centre in Washington, Tyne and Wear, before entering politics. She ran a refuge for women fleeing domestic violence and has written about how the centre served as "a lifeline" for those women determined to give their children a strong start despite their circumstances.

Phillipson's department has announced a complementary initiative: paying qualified early years teachers to work in the most deprived areas, where their expertise can have the greatest impact. The logic is straightforward—the gap in achievement between the poorest and most affluent children by age 16 is largely set before they start school, creating what Phillipson has called "a vicious cycle of lost life chances." By concentrating resources where need is greatest, the government is betting that early intervention can interrupt that cycle.

The expansion represents a significant shift in how the government thinks about supporting families with young children. Rather than treating mental health support, feeding advice, and parental bonding as separate services, they are being integrated into a single point of contact in communities. For parents navigating the early months of parenthood—a period that can be isolating and overwhelming—having access to multiple forms of support in one place may prove more effective than services scattered across different providers. The question now is whether the £500 million commitment will be sustained, and whether the hubs can be staffed and run effectively once they open.