Bradford District’s Family Hubs got involved in last week’s Baby Week Bradford, from 14 to 20 November, hosting a ‘Wiggle Room Play Bus’ at four venues across our Family Hub areas, with hundreds of people attending.
The Play Bus parked up at Farcliffe Family Hub (West), Barkerend (East), TFD (South) and Cliffe Castle park (for Keighley/Shipley). Some of the hubs also put on additional play activities, while some hosted a free shuttle to transport families to other Baby Week events at City Library and Sedbergh Leisure Centre.
Family Hubs colleagues also supported Baby Week’s main events at City Library, Sedbergh Leisure Centre and Cliffe Castle, talking to families, signposting services, providing information and more. These events were also very well attended, welcoming hundreds of children, parents and carers.
Baby Week Bradford is a fantastic week to celebrate the joy that babies bring, while also promoting services, and creating a platform to ensure that babies’ lived-experience is understood as this is what helps their ‘voices’ to be heard. The theme for this year’s Baby Week was ‘playful starts and happy hearts’, emphasising the importance of play for learning, bonding and fun during the earliest stages of a child’s life.
Attendance figures were high across the venues, showing the impact that events of this sort have when bringing families into our Family Hubs. This is an important step in introducing families to early help and other support that may be needed. Overall figures show that around 480 children and parents/carers took part in the Family Hubs’ four events, with 365 of these getting on board the Wiggle Room Play Bus.
Looking at the feedback forms, some of the support that families found out about at the events included: play groups, baby groups, health visitor support and breastfeeding support – all of which help to give babies and children the best start in life.
There was also excellent feedback from professionals, with one local partnership manager saying, about the Farcliffe event:
“I wanted to say how wonderful it was to see just how many of your families came out for the event and how appreciative they were of the family hub for putting it on. I had some lovely verbal feedback from parents on how much their children had enjoyed the activities. Your team were so lovely and created a great atmosphere for the parents and children. You should all be really proud.”
The whole week was a true partnership endeavour. Baby Week Bradford was delivered in partnership with and coordinated by Better Start Bradford, while the Wiggle Room Play Bus and shuttle bus were funded by the Family Hubs and Start for Life programme. Meanwhile, on the day it was our Family Hubs teams that welcomed families to their events and ensured that they were a success, along with Better Start Bradford and other some other partnership organisations that got involved.
We would like to say a big thank you to all our colleagues involved in making these events such a success!
More information about Family Hubs and the support they offer is on the FYI website: Family Hubs – on FYI.