Research and Background- Why Working with the VCFSE Sector Matters

When we picture a Family Hub, we often imagine a bright, welcoming space staffed by health visitors, social workers, and early years professionals. But look closer at any successful Family Hub, and you'll find another layer—often the most vital layer—of support: the voluntary, community, faith, and social enterprise (VCFSE) sector. These organisations don't just supplement statutory services; they are fundamental to making Family Hubs work.

VCFSE groups bring something that statutory services, despite their best efforts, often struggle to provide: trust, cultural competence, flexibility, and deep community roots. A church-based parent group, a community centre run by and for local families, a social enterprise offering creative activities—these organisations often reach families who would never walk through the door of a formal service.

Trust and Accessibility

Many families, particularly those who have had negative experiences with statutory services, find VCFSE organisations less intimidating. There's no case file, no assessment paperwork, no fear that asking for help might trigger a referral to children's services. A parent struggling with isolation might attend a community café long before they'd speak to a health visitor. A family new to the area might first connect with a faith group from their own community. This low-threshold access is invaluable for early intervention and prevention.

Cultural and Linguistic Competence

VCFSE organisations often emerge from and reflect the communities they serve. A Somali women's group understands cultural nuances around parenting that generic parenting programs might miss. A Pakistani community centre can offer support in Urdu or Punjabi. An LGBTQIA+ family support group creates safe spaces that statutory services may struggle to provide. This isn't about statutory services being deliberately exclusionary—it's about recognising that community organisations often have insights and relationships built over years or even generations.

Flexibility and Innovation

Unencumbered by the bureaucratic structures that constrain local authorities and the NHS, VCFSE organisations can often respond quickly to emerging needs. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, community groups rapidly pivoted to delivering food parcels, organising virtual support sessions, and conducting welfare checks. They could experiment with new approaches, operate outside traditional hours, and adapt programs based on immediate feedback from families.

Prevention and Early Help

Perhaps most importantly, VCFSE organisations excel at prevention. By the time families reach crisis point and statutory services become involved, problems are entrenched and costly to address. Community groups catch families earlier—providing peer support before loneliness becomes depression, offering debt advice before eviction looms, creating inclusive spaces before isolation takes hold. This preventative work saves money and, more importantly, prevents suffering.

The relationship between Family Hubs and the VCFSE sector takes various forms, each with distinct advantages and challenges.

Co-location Models

In some Family Hubs, VCFSE organisations operate directly from the hub building, running regular sessions alongside statutory services. A breastfeeding support charity might offer weekly drop-ins; a mental health social enterprise could provide counselling sessions; a food bank might operate from a side room. This co-location creates natural referral pathways and helps families access multiple types of support in one place.

Many family hubs, include co-location of health services and collaboration with other local services, such as commissioned and voluntary community sector services. See case studies: Coventry City Council: Building a comprehensive support system for families | Local Government Association and Dudley Council: Co-locating a Family Hub Spoke in Halesowen Leisure Centre | Local Government Association

The benefit is visibility and integration. Families already at the hub for a health visitor appointment might discover a community activity they wouldn't have known existed. Professionals from different organisations build relationships, improving communication and coordination.

The challenge is space and resources. Family Hubs often operate from buildings that weren't designed for multiple organisations, creating competition for rooms and scheduling headaches. There's also a risk that co-location becomes tokenistic—VCFSE groups present but not truly integrated into decision-making or service design.

Networked Models

Many Family Hubs operate as networks or "hubs without walls," connecting families to VCFSE organisations operating in their own community spaces. The Family Hub acts as a navigator, signposting families to relevant community resources while maintaining links with statutory services for those who need them.

This approach recognises that families often prefer to access support in familiar, local settings rather than traveling to a central hub. It also acknowledges the expertise and infrastructure VCFSE organisations have already built. A community centre that's been running baby groups for twenty years doesn't need to relocate to a Family Hub to be part of the model.

In Hillingdon, the team engaged with the community and with partners to understand what is wanted in each locality, with the focus on buildings being a central place for service delivery, but ensuring that services are not limited by the building itself. Hillingdon council: transforming local services through family hubs in Hillingdon | Local Government Association

The challenge here is coordination. Without regular face-to-face contact, professionals can lose track of what different organisations offer. Referral pathways become unclear, and families might still fall through gaps. Strong communication systems and regular partnership meetings are essential.

Commissioned Services

Some local authorities commission VCFSE organisations to deliver specific elements of Family Hub provision—parenting programs, family support services, mental health interventions, or targeted work with particular communities. This provides financial sustainability for VCFSE organisations and clear accountability for outcomes.

No councils are running all family hubs services on their own, and councils are making good use of local commissioning arrangements to help deliver services, with the voluntary sector often being engaged for this purpose.

Lincolnshire delivers many of its services via local commissioning arrangements and partnership working, with 85 per cent of early help and 'Team Around the Child' led by partners, including many organisations from the voluntary sector. 

Commissioning can formalise partnerships and ensure VCFSE organisations have the resources to deliver quality services. It recognises the value these organisations bring and pays them accordingly.

However, commissioning also brings risks. Grant dependency can change organisational culture, and competitive tendering processes can pit organisations against each other, undermining collaboration. Short-term contracts create instability, making it hard to retain staff and plan strategically. There's also a risk that only larger, more professionalised organisations can navigate complex commissioning processes, excluding smaller, grassroots groups.

Volunteer and Peer Support Integration

Many VCFSE organisations mobilise volunteers—including parents with lived experience—to provide peer support. Family Hubs can facilitate this by providing training, safeguarding support, and supervision structures that enable volunteers to work effectively and safely.

Peer support is powerful. A parent who has navigated postnatal depression, supported a child with additional needs, or successfully moved into employment can offer hope and practical insights that professionals cannot. Volunteers also extend the reach of Family Hubs, providing support at times and in places that paid staff cannot cover.

The key is ensuring volunteers feel valued, supported, and safe. This requires investment in training, regular supervision, clear boundaries about what volunteers can and cannot do, and robust safeguarding procedures.

Real-world examples demonstrate how these partnership models work in practice, highlighting both successes and lessons learned.

Essex County Council - Large-Scale Commissioning Partnership

The implementation of family hubs: Emerging strategies for success | Local Government Association

Essex provides one of the most comprehensive examples of VCFSE partnership through commissioning. Essex is almost entirely managing its services through commissioning arrangements, having commissioned ethnographic research on what families wanted from its services before deciding to work with HCRG Care Group and Barnardo's to deliver its hubs.

HCRG Care Group, working in partnership with Barnardo's, was commissioned to deliver improved outcomes for families with the Essex Child and Family Wellbeing Service, with services previously split across 5 providers now set up as a single service based across 12 'delivery sites', with Barnardo's and HCRG Care Group colleagues working side-by-side around families Essex County Council.

What makes Essex particularly noteworthy is the scale of integration and the emphasis on community empowerment. The service empowers communities to self-help with a strong volunteering force and facilities made available for parents to set up peer-support groups Essex County Council. This isn't just about contracting out services—it's about building community capacity.

The results speak for themselves. The service was reviewed in 2020 by the Social Mobility Pledge, with its report concluding the model developed in partnership with Essex County Council should be 'the standard across the health sector' Essex County Council.

Key Learning: Large-scale commissioning can work effectively when it's preceded by genuine consultation with families and when contracts are structured to enable community empowerment rather than simply service delivery.

Westminster - Voluntary Sector Co-Leadership

Westminster demonstrates what true partnership at the governance level looks like. Rather than having VCFSE organisations deliver services designed by the local authority, Westminster has embedded voluntary sector leadership into decision-making structures.

The Early Help Partnership Board is co-chaired by the head of early help and the chief executive of the Young Westminster Foundation, which models integration and brings the voluntary sector into the governance arrangements as equal partners.

This partnership extends down to operational levels. Each family hub has a local integrated leadership team (ILT) made up of operational managers from all key local partner agencies including local VCS partners, as well as social work and targeted early help managers A school-led model bringing together education, health, housing and family support across Westminster | Local Government Association

Key Learning: When VCFSE representatives have genuine decision-making power—not just advisory roles—they can shape services from the design stage, ensuring community perspectives aren't an afterthought.

Leicestershire - Community Fridge Partnership

Leicestershire offers an excellent example of addressing practical needs through VCFSE partnership while building community connections and volunteer capacity. Leicestershire County Council worked closely with community organisations to set up, stock and maintain community fridges in their family hubs so families could access the support they need in one convenient, familiar location Community Fridges – supporting families and reducing waste in Leicestershire | Local Government Association

Four Community Fridges are currently managed by a team of Children and Family Wellbeing Service volunteers at Family Hubs in Hinckley, Wigston Magna, Coalville and Loughborough, working with local partners including M&S, Coop, Aldi, Lidl, Milner's Bakery, Greggs, Asda, Waitrose, Sainsburys and Greets Fruit and Veg. 

The scale of volunteer engagement is impressive. In their first year, 180 volunteers gave up around 7,000 hours of their time and nearly 43 tonnes of food were saved from landfill thanks to community fridges based at the sites.

But this isn't just about food distribution. The Family Hubs also provide cook-and-eat sessions, skill sharing, and other support services to help families make the most of the food they receive. This transforms what could be a simple food aid program into a community-building initiative that addresses food poverty, environmental sustainability, volunteer engagement, and skill development simultaneously.

Key Learning: Practical, tangible support (like food) can be a gateway to building relationships and addressing broader needs. Volunteer-led initiatives can achieve impressive scale when properly supported.

Wolverhampton - Partnership Boards with VCFSE Representation

Wolverhampton demonstrates how partnership governance structures can ensure diverse voices shape local provision. A Partnership Board has been established for each Family Hub in Wolverhampton with the aim of identifying the local needs of the population relevant to each site, with membership including a variety of health and social care professionals, parent representatives and community and voluntary sector organisations.

Collaboration among multiple agencies was a key factor in Wolverhampton's success, with the local team utilising support from council services, health services and the voluntary and community sector to come together and build an iterative approach.

Key Learning: Site-specific partnership boards allow for localized decision-making that reflects the particular needs and assets of different communities within a local authority area.

Gloucestershire - Co-production from the Start

Gloucestershire offers an example of building VCFSE partnership into the fundamental design of Family Hubs rather than retrofitting it later. Cabinet approval was given in July 2021 to allow time to reshape and consult with the voluntary and community sector, statutory organisations and early years providers in order to consider an offer around developing an integrated service to children and families in Gloucestershire focused more on prevention and early intervention.

Key Learning: Taking time for genuine co-production at the design stage, even if it delays implementation, creates stronger foundations for sustainable partnership.

These case studies, alongside the broader research on Family Hub development, reveal several critical success factors for effective VCFSE partnerships.

Genuine Co-production

As the Gloucestershire example demonstrates, VCFSE organisations should be involved in Family Hub design from the start, not invited to fill gaps after statutory services have already mapped out provision. Co-production means shared decision-making about priorities, service models, and resource allocation. It means valuing community insight as much as professional expertise and administrative data.

In line with the family hub development process and theory of change, VCFS organisations should form part of early family hub development and strategy.

This requires local authorities to share power genuinely, not just rhetorically. VCFSE representatives should sit on Family Hub steering groups with equal voice—as Westminster's co-chaired partnership board illustrates. Community organisations should be consulted on service design before decisions are made, not after. When families are asked what they need, VCFSE partners should be part of interpreting and acting on that feedback.

Fair Funding

The VCFSE sector has long been expected to deliver more with less, relying on precarious short-term funding and volunteer goodwill. If Family Hubs genuinely value VCFSE contributions, this must be reflected in sustainable funding.

This doesn't mean everything needs to be commissioned. Core funding that allows organisations to maintain infrastructure, pay staff fairly, and plan long-term is often more valuable than multiple small project grants. When services are commissioned, contracts should be long enough (ideally three to five years minimum) to allow for meaningful impact and should include fair overhead costs, not just direct delivery expenses.

Some Family Hubs have established small grants programs to fund community-led initiatives, recognising that not all valuable work fits neat commissioning frameworks. These flexible funds enable grassroots innovation and ensure smaller organisations can participate.

Infrastructure Support

VCFSE organisations often lack the back-office infrastructure that statutory services take for granted—HR support, financial management, IT systems, safeguarding expertise. Family Hubs and local authorities can provide this infrastructure, allowing community organisations to focus on their core work.

This might include offering training on safeguarding, providing access to shared booking systems, offering fundraising support, or creating simplified referral pathways. Some areas have designated VCFSE infrastructure organisations that provide this support across the sector.

The Leicestershire community fridge example shows this in action—local authority coordination with multiple food retailers, provision of hub space, and volunteer management support enables community organisations to focus on what they do best: engaging with families.

Clear Communication Channels

Partnerships struggle when communication breaks down. Family Hubs need regular, structured ways of connecting with VCFSE partners—not just crisis meetings when problems arise.

This might include regular partnership forums where all organisations can share updates and coordinate activities, shared digital platforms for service directories and referral information, and clear named contacts in both statutory services and VCFSE organisations who can troubleshoot issues. Some Family Hubs employ dedicated community partnership coordinators whose role is to maintain these relationships.

Wolverhampton's site-specific partnership boards provide one model for this—regular, structured meetings with diverse membership ensure ongoing communication and coordination.

Respecting Different Cultures

Statutory services and VCFSE organisations often operate with different cultures, values, and working styles. Neither is inherently better; they're just different. Effective partnerships require mutual respect and willingness to learn from each other.

Statutory services might need to accept that VCFSE organisations can't always provide the same level of data reporting or standardisation. VCFSE organisations might need to understand statutory services' legal responsibilities and constraints. 

Faith organisations deserve specific attention within the VCFSE sector. They often have extensive community infrastructure, committed volunteers, and deep roots in local areas. Churches, mosques, synagogues, temples, and gurdwaras frequently run parent-toddler groups, food banks, debt advice services, and community cafes.

Faith groups can reach families who might not engage with secular services, and their values-driven motivation often creates particularly committed, sustainable support. However, partnership with faith organisations requires careful navigation.

Safeguarding and Values Alignment

Faith organisations must meet the same safeguarding standards as any other partner. This is non-negotiable. There must also be alignment on core values—particularly around inclusion, equality, and approaches to issues like domestic abuse, mental health, or LGBTQ+ families.

This doesn't mean faith organisations must abandon their theological positions, but it does mean their service delivery must be non-discriminatory and child-centred. Difficult conversations about these issues should happen early in partnerships, not after problems arise.

Social Enterprises: A Growing Force

Social enterprises—organisations that trade for social purpose—are increasingly important in Family Hub partnerships. They bring business acumen and innovation to social problems, often creating more sustainable models than traditional grant-dependent charities.

A social enterprise might run a café employing parents returning to work, creating both a welcoming community space and training opportunities. Another might sell parenting programs to affluent areas to subsidise free provision in deprived neighbourhoods. A community interest company might provide childcare services on a sliding scale, ensuring affordability while generating revenue for sustainability.

Social enterprises can be particularly effective at reaching working families who may not see themselves as needing "support services" but will happily pay for quality childcare, enrichment activities, or family experiences that also happen to be delivered with a support and inclusion ethos.

The Essex model, delivered through HCRG Care Group (a social enterprise) in partnership with Barnardo's (a traditional charity), demonstrates how social enterprise approaches can bring innovation and sustainability to Family Hub delivery at scale.

One persistent challenge in VCFSE partnerships is demonstrating impact. Funders and commissioners increasingly demand evidence of outcomes, but the preventative, relationship-based work that VCFSE organisations excel at is often hardest to measure.

A parent attending a community group might not fill in an outcomes form, but the connections they make might prevent isolation and improve their mental health. The child who joins in messy play at a church hall might be developing school readiness skills, but no one is administering developmental assessments.

Family Hubs can help by:

• Using flexible, proportionate evaluation approaches that capture stories and qualitative outcomes, not just numbers
• Sharing data and evaluation capacity with smaller VCFSE partners
• Recognising that not all valuable work is easily measurable
• Connecting VCFSE activity to longer-term population outcomes rather than expecting immediate, attributable results from each small intervention

Honest discussion of VCFSE partnerships must acknowledge real challenges that emerge even in successful examples.

Sustainability and Capacity

Many VCFSE organisations are small, run on shoestring budgets, and dependent on insecure funding. They may lack capacity to attend endless partnership meetings, complete complicated monitoring requirements, or scale up provision to meet demand. Expecting them to function like well-resourced statutory services is unrealistic and unfair.

The Lincolnshire example, where 85% of early help is partner-led, demonstrates significant reliance on VCFSE capacity. This model only works sustainably if those partners have adequate funding and support.

Quality and Safeguarding

While many VCFSE organisations deliver outstanding support, quality is variable. Some may lack appropriate safeguarding procedures, trained staff, or professional supervision. Family Hubs have a responsibility to ensure that families are signposted to safe, effective services—but imposing overly bureaucratic quality assurance processes can stifle the very flexibility and community authenticity that makes VCFSE organisations valuable.

Finding the right balance—ensuring safety without over-professionalising community support—requires nuanced judgment and ongoing dialogue.

Competition vs. Collaboration

When local authorities commission services, VCFSE organisations that might otherwise collaborate find themselves competing for limited pots of money. This can undermine the collaborative ethos that Family Hubs depend on.

Some areas have addressed this through alliance contracting, where multiple VCFSE organisations bid together, or by disaggregating contracts so different organisations can specialise in what they do best rather than everyone trying to deliver everything. 

Boundaries and Professional Responsibility

When families engage with multiple services—some statutory, some voluntary—questions arise about responsibility and coordination. If a community group volunteer has concerns about a child, who do they tell? If a family disengages from health visiting but continues attending a church group, who's monitoring their wellbeing?

Clear protocols, regular communication, and understanding of different organisations' roles and responsibilities are essential. VCFSE organisations should never be expected to substitute for statutory services or carry professional responsibilities they're not equipped for, but they should be valued partners in a coordinated system of support.

Looking across the case studies presented, several consistent patterns emerge that characterise successful VCFSE partnerships:

1. Scale and Variety of Engagement: The most effective Family Hub areas don't rely on a single partnership model. Essex combines large-scale commissioning with volunteer mobilization. Westminster combines governance-level co-leadership with operational integration. Leicestershire combines volunteer-led practical support with professional services.

2. Investment in Relationships: All successful examples involve dedicated time and resources for partnership building. This might be co-chairs of partnership boards, site-specific partnership teams, or time built into commissioned contracts for coordination and collaboration.

3. Moving Beyond Buildings: While co-location has benefits, the most successful models (like Hillingdon and Cornwall) recognise that Family Hubs are networks, not just buildings. VCFSE partners don't need to relocate to be part of the model.

4. Practical, Tangible Entry Points: The community fridge model demonstrates how meeting immediate, practical needs (food) creates trust and relationships that enable engagement with other support. VCFSE organisations often excel at these tangible, low-barrier offers.

5. Genuine Power Sharing: Westminster's co-chaired partnership board represents a genuine shift in power dynamics, not just tokenistic involvement. This level of shared governance remains rare but appears highly effective where implemented.

The most exciting Family Hub developments recognise VCFSE organisations not as gap-fillers or service extenders, but as equal partners bringing distinctive strengths. This means moving beyond transactional relationships ("we'll refer families to you if you run this group") toward genuine collaboration where VCFSE voices shape strategy, resources are shared equitably, and community expertise is valued alongside professional knowledge.

It means local authorities being willing to fund VCFSE infrastructure—things like financial management systems, training, and coordination—that enables effective delivery. It means commissioners designing processes that smaller organisations can access, not just large charities with bid-writing departments.

Most fundamentally, it means recognising that statutory services, however well-intentioned and well-resourced, cannot meet all family needs alone. The VCFSE sector isn't a nice addition to Family Hubs; it's an essential ingredient without which the model cannot achieve its ambitions.

Family Hubs at their best are not buildings or services, but ecosystems of support rooted in community relationships. VCFSE organisations are the connective tissue of these ecosystems—creating spaces where families feel they belong, building bridges between formal services and community life, and offering the flexibility, cultural connection, and preventative support that keeps families thriving.

The question isn't whether VCFSE organisations should be part of Family Hubs, but how to ensure they're truly valued, adequately resourced, and meaningfully included in partnerships. When we get this right, everyone benefits: statutory services gain reach and effectiveness, VCFSE organisations gain sustainability and recognition, and families gain coordinated support that respects their autonomy, meets them where they are, and mobilises every possible resource—professional and community, funded and voluntary, secular and faith-based—in support of their flourishing.

The evidence from successful Family Hub areas across England demonstrates that this isn't idealistic aspiration—it's practical reality. VCFSE organisations are already proving their value as essential partners in supporting families.

In the end, strong families need strong communities. Family Hubs that partner effectively with the VCFSE sector aren't just delivering services—they're strengthening the community fabric that families depend on long after any particular program or intervention ends. The case studies presented here provide both inspiration and practical models for areas seeking to develop truly integrated, community-rooted Family Hub provision.

1. Start with relationships, not contracts
Strong partnerships are built through trust, not just commissioning arrangements.

2. Involve VCFSE partners early
Bring organisations into design and planning, not just delivery.

3. Value community expertise
VCFSE organisations often understand communities better than statutory services.

4. Keep it proportionate and flexible
Simplify processes so smaller organisations can participate.

5. Prioritise equity and reach
Work with trusted community and faith organisations to engage families who are not accessing services.