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In 2023, we worked intently with a growing number of Local Authority partners to deliver a better start for tens of thousands of parents and children across England through the Department for Education’s Family Hubs Programme. Among the service expectations is for all LAs to publish a ‘Start for Life’ offer to local families, to ensure that parents and carers in the area are properly informed about the support available to them during their child’s first 1001 days.
The Start for Life offer should include all services available locally for families during the period from conception to the age of 2, including those taken up on the basis of need. It should be publicised online, as well as in locations that parents and carers are likely to visit in person, for example, GP surgeries and children's centres. We’re delighted that many of our LA partners are Including EasyPeasy in their Start for Life offers. We’re also excited to be exploring an even higher impact approach to integrating our services with key partners through the use of data sharing.
Local Authorities manage Birth Registers that record all new births in the local area, along with contact details for each family. Through developing Data Sharing Agreements with our LA partners, we can use this information to share targeted invitations with new parents to join the EasyPeasy community and access personalised parenting support. While we're already very successful in raising awareness and driving uptake among parent communities in partnership with LAs, this data sharing approach presents an opportunity to effectively target new parents at the very start of their journey, further supporting Start for Life strategies.
Beyond Start for Life, data sharing can unlock so much more potential to effectively reach and support families. Another example we are exploring with partners is driving up the effectiveness of universal health checks. As part of the 0-19 healthy child programme, all families are entitled to a series of 5 ‘mandated’ health checks across their early years from antenatal to the time a child is two and half years old. These checks provide vital touch points across the most important years of a child's development, ensuring that parents are supported and that children are progressing as they should in their development.
While these health checks are intended to be universal, in reality reaching all families can be a struggle. Between 2018-2020, only 78% of children were reached with a universal health check. Not only is this costly, but it also means missing rare opportunities to see and support families at a crucial stage in their lives.
Through sharing data about upcoming health check appointments between EasyPeasy and the LA, EasyPeasy can easily share simple appointment reminders with families, helping them to stay on track in their plans, alongside following up with relevant child development activities and advice for each health check based on key Ages & Stages milestones reviewed by health visitors during their meetings.
These are just a couple of ways in which working together to share data can benefit families and children as well as reduce pressure and cost on the early years system. At EasyPeasy, we understand that data protection and privacy are paramount, and that is why we are registered with the Information Commissioner's Office and have developed a comprehensive Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA).
Our DPIA ensures that we are meeting all GDPR requirements as well as taking proper steps to assess and mitigate risks to our users' data, and is publicly available here.
If you'd like to learn more about EasyPeasy's approach to data protection and privacy, you can reach out to our Data Protection Officer through the hello@easypeasyapp.com inbox.