A Better Start: Practice Briefings
Introduction
This series of practice briefings draw out key messages for practitioners from the national evaluation of A Better Start (ABS), a ten-year (2015-2025) place-based programme funded by The National Lottery Community Fund.
Five ABS partnerships in Blackpool, Bradford, Lambeth, Nottingham and Southend-On-Sea developed support to families to give their babies and very young children the best possible start in life. Involving local parents, the ABS partnerships have developed and tested ways to improve children’s diet and nutrition, social and emotional development, and speech, language and communication.
The briefings
- Scaffolding support and prioritising family voices for child development: Frontline Briefing (2026)
- Moving Towards Tapestries of Care and Connection: Strategic Briefing (2025)
- Working with families to support early childhood development: Learning from the evaluation of A Better Start: Frontline Briefing (2024)
Download and read the briefings from the menu on the right.
For further learning from A Better Start, see NCB's 'What we've learned' page. From December 2025, the NCB team are publishing four Insight Reports, bringing together ten years of learning from across the five A Better Start partnerships. This first report on school readiness 'Learning from a Better Start' is now available.
Professional Standards
PQS:KSS - Relationships and effective direct work | Communication | Child development | Organisational context | Promote and govern excellent practice | Developing excellent practitioners | Shaping and influencing the practice system | Lead and govern excellent practice | Creating a context for excellent practice | Designing a system to support effective practice | Developing excellent practitioners
CQC - Effective | Responsive | Caring
PCF - Diversity and equality | Contexts and organisations | Values and ethics
RCOT - Understanding relationship | Service users | Collaborative | Identify needs