About Family Voices

The background

We want local residents to make sure that Family Hubs are designed to meet the needs of their locality (area).

To do this, we have set up Birmingham Family Voices, which is listening to local needs, mainly about the ‘Best Start for Life‘ first 1001 days of a child’s life.

Family Voices is the place where parents and carers work together with local service leads and commissioners to help design and evaluate services. This helps to ensure families are at the centre of service design and delivery across Birmingham.

As part of setting up each Family Hub in the 10 localities, Birmingham Family Voices has a group in each area which come together to form a city wide Family Voices group. These groups are sometimes called parent/carer panels.

The purpose

The purpose of the Family Voices groups is to make sure:

• local parents/carers play a key role in designing and continuously improving family services
• the voice of local parents/carers are heard, including those whose voices are rarely heard
• Family Hubs are designed for inclusion and meet the needs of Birmingham's diverse communities

We want to make sure that each Family Voices group is representative of a range of parenting scenarios and of Birmingham’s diverse communities. We are therefore welcoming families from all walks of life and backgrounds with a focus on those who are pregnant or a partner of an expectant parent, and with children up to the age of 2 years.

We want more families to get involved.

What it involves

You will help shape how services for families are delivered and be a valued part of Family Hubs development.

You will meet new people in your community and have the opportunity together to build Family Hubs that meet families’ needs.

You may want to join for your own personal development, or to share your experience of accessing services for families and how they could be developed or improved.

Family Voices meetings will be agreed at a time and place that works best for members of the group. This is likely to be two hours at least every two months, and can be either face-to-face, online, or hybrid to make it easier for you to take part.

How we will support you

We want to make Family Voices as accessible as possible so we will talk to you about what you need to take part.

Examples of the support we can offer include:

• creche/childcare for meetings if needed
• travel fares to meetings (by public transport)
• refreshments in meetings
• interpreting
• rewards and recognitions - gift vouchers or time credits
• any other accessibility requirement to help you fully participate in meetings/training

Page last updated: 20 December 2023