To improve the health and wellbeing of families across South Tees, it's critical that all partners work together to support families. The scale of the issues are just too great to tackle alone. Fortunately South Tees has a wide range of partners committed to giving children the best start in life.
The South Tees Best Start Partnership works to make sure families get great support in the first 1001 days of their child's life.
The partnership was established following NHS reforms in 2012, which resulted in fragmented commissioning and delivery of maternal and infant services. The partnership aimed to develop a strategic, overarching plan for delivering all health and early years services which impact on maternal, infant, and child health. This was to ensure that locally there was a collaborative, co-ordinated, and joined up approach in the commissioning, and delivery, of services to families.
Led by Public Health South Tees, the Best Start Partnership has been instrumental in improvements to maternal and early years support in South Tees, challenging partners in the sector to work together to achieve more.
Areas of work
The partnership focusses on:
- improving child development
- parenting support in the first 1001 days of a child's life
- making breastfeeding the norm for more mothers
- parents and children being of a healthy weight
- reducing the harms caused by parental substance use
- improving mental health in maternal and early years
- keeping children safe from preventable accidents