12 Shining Moments

In June 2014, it was announced that £48,969,270, from the Big Lottery Fund (now the National Lottery Community Fund), had been awarded to the Better Start Bradford community partnership led by Bradford Trident, to work with families in Bowling and Barkerend, Bradford Moor and Little Horton from 2015-2025.

Bradford was one of five areas in England to share £215 million from the Big Lottery Fund’s A Better Start investment, following a thorough selection process. The other areas were Southend, Nottingham, Blackpool and Lambeth.

Ten years on and we’ve worked with thousands of families and individuals in the Better Start Bradford area, helping give children the best start in life.

Read the launch press piece in the Telegraph and Argus here.

Talking Together was the first Better Start Bradford project to launch in 2015, delivered by BHT Early Education and Training. It has also been among the final projects to complete in November 2024.

The project provided language assessments to all 2 year olds in the Better Start Bradford are, and those children that needed additional support were given one-to-one 6-week support in their own home.

The project has assessed well over 5,000 children for home-based language support.

The project has become widely recognised and respected by families and professionals across the Bradford district and is a key element of the Talking Bradford pathway.

“Through the support from the Language Development Worker my child is now interacting with me, gaining eye contact and he is now wanting to play with us. My child used to be silent and he is now using sounds and babbling. The programme has been amazing!”

“I have found the Talking Together Programme to be really helpful. It’s helped me to understand my child more and given me direction of how to support his communication.”

We began 2020 in style with no less than a Royal visit! We were thrilled to showcase our work when the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge visited Bradford, meeting with parents/carers and their babies and toddlers from Little Dots, a music and play group funded by our Parents in the Lead Activities Fund and run by Shine West Bowling. They also met our Older Yet Wiser project, run by ChildsSide who ran workshop for grandparents with child-caring responsibilities.

The Duchess has since set up the Royal Foundation for Early Childhood, and we like to think we played just a tiny part in influencing its development one chilly day in Bradford…

Read more here.

Six years ago Get Out More CIC were commissioned by Better Start Bradford to deliver a programme of outdoor activity to increase the confidence and skills of accessing nature play for families with 0-3 year olds in the Better Start Bradford area. The Forest School Play project was born!

Over the course of the six years The Forest School Play Project has worked with nearly 600 three-year-old children from 61 nurseries, and run 541 free family play sessions in local parks, extending the opportunity for outdoor play beyond their forest school programmes and creating a lifetime of enjoyment of the outdoors.

The Forest School Play Project was celebrated at an event in Bowling Park on Wednesday 19 June, where the Get Out More CIC team shared and showcased their achievements for the last six years with Better Start Bradford, organisations and families involved in the delivery of the Forest School Play Project.

Read more here.

November 2018 saw the first ever Baby Week Bradford. Following in the footsteps of our close neighbours, Baby Week Leeds, we co-ordinated a week of events and activities to celebrate babies and all those who care for them, and have since delivered six more along with a growing network of partners across the district.

Themes have included: being a baby in Bradford and beyond; speech, language and communication; health and nutrition; and, most-recently, play.

We’ve welcomed a few celebrities along the way – including Floella Benjamin, Dr Amir Khan, and George Webster – created The Baby Week Wiggle along with @boomchikkaboom (which has now been adopted nationally), and had some seriously fun-packed times. Most-importantly though, over 10,000 of you have been involved by coming along to events or running your own activities. Simply amazing!

Read all about this year’s Baby Week Bradford.

On 12 February 2019 we introduced some special new characters to the world…

The Big Little Moments characters show how the little moments you share with your child add up to something much bigger, giving them skills they need to develop into healthy, bright adults.

There are 8 ‘moments’ including ‘sharing a story’, ‘making everyday moments fun’ and ‘talking to the bump’, each with its own animated video to show you the way.

The characters and their messages have reached thousands of people across the nation since 2019, and they’re still going strong.

Find out what they’ve got to say on our website.

Since 2017 our Better Place project has been working its magic across parks, pocket parks, community centres, streets and green spaces all across the Better Start Bradford areas of Bowling and Barkerend, Bradford Moor and Little Horton for families with children aged 0-3.

Over £2 million has been invested in the area with 25 acres in area of landscape improvements – that’s the equivalent of 911 football pitches! Alongside the improvements, the team have engaged the community in nature play with a massive 1037 Better Place outdoor play sessions being delivered in parks and green spaces with over 10,400 children attending.

Adele Adams, Better Place Project Manager said:

“Our project shapes our future generations where little explorers come back to our playful spaces time after time, finding fun, excitement, adventure and challenges. They build strength, grace, and confidence, connect and make friends, and weave stories that ripple with happiness.”

Better Place identifies and oversees improvements to local parks and outdoor spaces with the aim of providing a healthier and happier environment for babies, young children and families. The project is also finding ways to reduce exposure to harmful traffic fumes for pregnant women and small children.

The Better Place project is delivered in collaboration with Bradford Council, Bradford Trident, Groundwork, Public Health, voluntary and community sector groups and local people.

Check out this video highlighting the amazing work that they have done.

Come Outside – A Better Place Project

The Maternal Early Childhood Sustained Home-visiting programme (MECSH) is a parenting programme developed in Australia for families at risk of poorer maternal and child health and development outcomes. It was originally developed by distinguished Professor Lynn Kemp, Director of the Translational Research and Social Innovation group at the School of Nursing and Midwifery at Western Sydney University.

In 2021, Better Start Bradford brought the MECSH programme to Bradford and funded the initial trial. It was successfully delivered by the Health Visiting team in the Better Start Bradford/Bradford East areas.

The MECSH model uses a preventative and early intervention approach and works with vulnerable families who may need extra parenting support after their baby is born. Each family who takes part in the MECSH programme receives 25 visits from the same health visitor where possible. The trust built up in a therapeutic relationship can help people feel safe to discuss their issues and develop plans to address them with support.

Thanks to the success of the pilot, MECSH was rolled out across the Bradford District in August 2023 by the Bradford District Care NHS Foundation Trust who have adopted it as their model for Health Visiting.

Read more about MECSH here.

In August 2023, our BiBBS project (Born in Bradford’s Better Start) reached its target of signing up 5000 babies. BiBBS is a birth cohort study that aims to understand the effects of early-life interventions on children’s health and development. This is done by collecting information about participants’ pregnancy and their children to understand how to provide the best start in life.

They will follow the babies’ progress through the first two decades of their life to find out what keeps families healthy.

BiBBS completed recruitment in July 2024 with over 5,600 families recruited. Thank you to all of the families and services that have helped them to reach this amazing number.

Born in Bradford are now busy analysing the information in BiBBS to find out what works to help families and children have the best possible start in life. For more information on what they have learnt, please visit their publications.

Check out this lovely video the BiBBS Team made in the summer.

Read more about the study here.

The Neighbourhoods Project was launched in 2019 in recognition of the need to optimise recruitment into Better Start Bradford projects from under-represented groups, and to ensure that the programme messages reach as many families as possible.

The Neighbourhood Workers were based within established organisations with existing relationships with the local community. They were tasked with disseminating programme messages, engaging families and, where appropriate, referring families into Better Start Bradford projects.

Being embedded within established organisations also meant they could offer an enhanced service, helping families access additional services, advice and activities provided by those organisations.

On Wednesday 28 February 2024, Better Start Bradford hosted a celebration event for our Neighbourhood Workers to thank them for all of their hard work before the Neighbourhood Project closes at the end of March 2024, in line with the final stage of the Better Start Bradford programme.

Families and colleagues from across the Better Start Bradford area came together to thank this amazing team of individuals, who have shown commitment, passion and kindness for the communities within which they were embedded.

Find our more here.

In September 2022, we launched the Happy Early Years (HEY!) Fund with funding of up to £2500 available for parents to run initiatives for families, giving them the freedom to devlop their own activities for 0-3s and the chance to learn new skills along the way.

Between then and June 2024, we awarded funding to 62 initiatives, totalling over £100,000, including pregnancy yoga classes, antenatal well-being groups, new stay and play sessions, mobile soft play equipment, school preparation sessions for toddlers, baking activities, woodworking sessions, weekend stay and play sessions for dads, live music sessions for toddlers, farm animal themed activities with farm visits, hungry caterpillar themed play and stay sessions and much much more.

Find out more here:

www.heyfundbradford.org

The Happy Early Years Fund replaced Better Start Bradford’s Parents in the Lead Activities Fund, which awarded a total of over £160,000 to over 100 parent-led projects since October 2017.

To showcase our projects’ achievements since 2015 we hosted the ‘Better Stars Bradford’ project celebration event at Bradford Cathedral on 10 October 2024. We have delivered over 22 projects since 2015 and each one was showcased with a celebration board showing their background, highlights and impact, forming an exhibition down the centre of the Cathedral. The event also had lovely celebratory music and an afternoon tea for guests.

Gill Thornton, Director of Better Start Bradford, and Vicki Smith, Funding Manager from The National Lottery Community Fund, thanked all our projects for the impact they have had in Bradford, on the overall A Better Start Programme and on national early year’s policy.

Over 160 people attended, including current and past project staff, volunteers and Better Start Bradford staff.

Gill said:

“It was quite mind-blowing to see the exhibition showing how many amazing things our projects and Better Start Bradford have done with so many of our parents and children. Feedback from the attendees was massively positive, and they were also awestruck.”

Read more here.

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