Health and early years services

Abstract

An increasing body of evidence around the importance of the first 5 years of life has led to rapid development in recent years in services for children of this age, with a policy emphasis on joint working by health visitors and early years practitioners. This coincided with a large expansion in the number of 2-year-old children accessing free early education across the maintained, private, voluntary, and independent sectors. An integrated health and early education review was introduced to review children’s progress at age 2–2½ years, combining the child health programme review at that key contact point and the statutory early years progress check at age 2 years. Carrying out a joint review has placed new demands on the skillsets of both health and early years practitioners, but implementation and follow-up research studies have highlighted some of the potential benefits of joint working for children and families.