Towards a common approach to outcomes for all – London Best Start Family Hubs & Beyond
The London Family Hubs Community of Practice is leading the way in developing a unified, outcomes-focused approach to family help. By adopting the Common Outcomes Framework, boroughs have been able to align strategies, compare data meaningfully, and work together on shared challenges. This case study captures how the framework has been used across the capital to drive coherence, integration and better outcomes for children and families.
Starting point
In 2024, the London Family Hubs Community of Practice requested a shared approach to outcomes across the city. Local areas were using varied logic models, most of which focused on inputs and processes rather than the actual changes experienced by babies, children, young people, and parents. Outcomes relating directly to children were especially inconsistent or missing entirely.
London’s Family Hubs began this work from a shared ambition: to understand and celebrate the strengths of babies, children, young people and families, and to build systems that help them thrive. Yet the way outcomes were being measured made this difficult. Boroughs were working with different frameworks, data was uneven and often focused on deficits, and much of what mattered most confidence, connection, belonging, early development was not being captured consistently or at the right level of detail.
The Common Outcomes Framework created a way to shift the focus. By offering a shared, strengths-based structure—Safe, Healthy, Happy, Learning and Engaged—it helped boroughs look beyond services and processes to the positive changes families experience.
What was done
Using the Common Outcomes Framework as the organising structure, boroughs co-designed a more detailed, London-wide framework covering child outcomes, parent and carer outcomes, and system-level enablers.
Across London, boroughs worked together to:
Review local outcomes frameworks and logic models, identifying inconsistencies and gaps, particularly in measures relating directly to babies, children and young people.
Map more than 100 indicators and metrics against national datasets (Supporting Families, Public Health Outcomes Framework, LGOF) to build a comprehensive “super-spreadsheet” for local and cross-borough use.
Test data availability and quality at borough, ward and family hub level, highlighting strengths, gaps and inequalities.
Use the framework to shape local priorities, including commissioning, early help strategies, evaluation approaches and integration plans.
Identified cross-borough patterns, shared communities and common challenges supporting joint learning and opportunities for collaborative work.
Engaging with DfE and DHSC, using the shared framework to inform national conversations and anticipate future outcome requirements.
What the framework has enabled
The Common Outcomes Framework gave London a shared structure for understanding and improving outcomes across a complex, multi-agency system. It enabled boroughs to move beyond fragmented metrics and process-led reporting, creating a consistent way to analyse need, track progress and uncover inequalities.
By using the same outcome domains- Safe, Healthy, Happy, Learning and Engaged, boroughs could compare insights, identify gaps in data (particularly at ward and family hub level), and surface outcomes that were not being captured elsewhere, such as belonging, confidence and children’s feelings of safety.
The framework also strengthened collaboration. It highlighted cross-borough patterns, shared communities, border hotspots, and common system barriers which opened the door to joint work on issues that no single borough could tackle alone. At the same time, aligning the framework with national datasets and the emerging Local Government Outcomes Framework positioned London to influence and anticipate national policy direction.