This page sets out the evidence base for the Strengthening Families, Strengthening Communities (SFSC) programme with parents and carers of children aged 0–5. It draws on two years of published delivery data from a Start for Life commission, a Lancet-published Randomised Controlled Trial, and over two decades of independent evaluation. It is intended for funders, commissioners, and partners seeking to understand our early years work.

SFSC has always been a programme for families across the full span of childhood: from pregnancy and the earliest months of a child’s life through to young people reaching adulthood. The curriculum is structured to be developmentally appropriate at every stage, with content, strategies, and facilitated discussion that reflect the specific realities of parenting a very young child, a primary-age child, or a teenager. Facilitators are trained to draw out the material most relevant to the parents in the room, which in practice means that early years content — attachment, early communication, managing toddler behaviour, preparing for school — is a central part of most SFSC groups.

SFSC was a core part of the Sure Start programme from its earliest years, delivered regularly in Sure Start children’s centres across England. It remains a significant part of the service offer in early years settings, family hubs, and children’s centres across the country, and is included in the DfE’s Menu of Evidence-Based Parenting Interventions for Family Hubs and Start for Life.

Our work in the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham (LBBD) illustrates what this looks like in practice when SFSC is commissioned specifically as an early years programme. Since 2023, Race Equality Foundation has delivered SFSC there under a specific commission from the local authority as part of its Start for Life programme. Having at least one child under five, or being pregnant, was a condition of referral onto the programme.

Across two years of delivery (2023–25), the programme reached 148 parents and carers across ten programmes, delivered in children’s centres, family hubs, faith spaces, and community settings. The cohort was highly diverse in ethnicity, language, and socioeconomic background.

Recorded child age data shows that at least 88% of participants in 2024–25 had at least one child under five, with 47.5% caring exclusively for children in the 0–5 age group. Where child age was not recorded on forms, this reflects incomplete data submission rather than participants without young children, given the under-five referral criterion. In Year One (2023–24), almost all participants had a child aged 0–2.

Referral routes into the programme are consistent with early years commissioning. In 2024–25 the most common pathways were schools and early years settings (33 participants) and health professionals including health visitors and GPs (21 participants).

Race Equality Foundation collects demographic information and matched pre- and post-programme questionnaires from participants as a matter of course across all SFSC delivery. This is standard practice. The Barking and Dagenham cohort is presented here as an illustration of our data practice with this age group but this level of data collection reflects how REF routinely captures and reports on reach and impact wherever SFSC is delivered.

Across both years of the Start for Life commission, participants completed these standard pre- and post-programme questionnaires measuring change across parenting behaviours, emotional regulation, and understanding of child development. The data below is drawn from the 54 participants who completed both questionnaires in 2024–25, in a cohort where the substantial majority were parents or carers of children under five.

In Year One (2023–24), the programme showed particular impact in supporting parents to reduce reliance on verbal and physical approaches to discipline. Parents also reported significant improvements in confidence to manage disruptive behaviour, manage their own anger, and express their emotions effectively; parenting capacities directly relevant to the early years.

The LBBD delivery data above sits within a wider published evidence base built over more than two decades. The following sources are independently produced, publicly available, and collectively establish SFSC’s programme fidelity, effectiveness with minoritised communities, and relevance across the early years age range.

The LBBD delivery data above sits within a wider published evidence base built over more than two decades. The following sources are independently produced, publicly available, and collectively establish SFSC’s programme fidelity, effectiveness with minoritised communities, and relevance across the early years age range.

SFSC is independently recognised as an evidence-based programme by several national bodies, confirming its fidelity to established early childhood development frameworks.