Working as one
around every child and family

Eighteen workshops, three strands and nine topics, spread across two venues with participants in the room and online, all flowed into the consolidation plenary on Friday afternoon. This section brings together what participants told us, what it means once we put it side by side, and what it asks of the way each of us works.

18 WORKSHOPS · 3 STRANDS

Three lenses, one system

To make a complex question workable, the conference looked at integration through three lenses, each with a strand of its own: the structures that govern it, the resources that fund and measure it, and the relationships that hold it together.

Yet in almost every workshop, participants found themselves describing the links between the three, because in a family’s life governance, money and trust are never experienced separately.

What matters most is what happens in between, with the child and the family at the centre.

One discovery came up repeatedly, and it is perhaps the most important thing we learned: the toughest challenges and the biggest breakthroughs were about people, meaning not only those who work with children and families but also those who decide, fund, govern, train and support. Whether decision makers see the value of working together and back it, whether policy makers create room for a shared vision and clear pathways for coordination, and whether professionals from different sectors trust one another, share a language, lead well and involve families mattered every bit as much as any structure or budget.

What we heard, strand by strand

Six signals, tested by you

Before a word was spoken, the abstract submissions had already given us five signals, and in the workshops participants put them to the test. Four were confirmed, with Strand 3 affirming most strongly of all that “relationships are system architecture,” two were sharpened by the discussions, and one new signal emerged that was raised in every strand.

Sharpened signals: “Start with the child and family” has come to mean giving children and families real influence, in how quality is defined, in multidisciplinary teams and even in budget decisions, and then showing them what changed as a result, while “scaling is not replication” has become a concrete call to scale deep as well as wide, starting locally, adapting to context and embedding what works in policy, budgets and institutions.

New signal: invest in the workforce, by protecting frontline staff from overload, giving leaders the time they need to lead, ensuring fair pay and conditions, and helping professionals build the skills to work across sectors.

Leave behind · Grow

The warning that came from the workshops was never a warning against ambition, and was instead a warning against fragmentation, rigidity and disconnection.

Relationships need investment, learning needs infrastructure, and continuity needs shared leadership.

What it takes

From Ghent to Quetta and from Berlin to Chibuto, contributors described strikingly similar conditions for integration to work, and these come down to two things: what connects people, and what people need.

WORKING TOGETHER What connects people

• A standing ‘table’ where sectors, government, NGOs and families meet regularly, not just for the length of a project.
• Shared goals and a common language that every profession, and every parent, understands.
• Trust between levels, with governments that let civil society lead and communities that trust institutions enough to take part.
• Visibility of where funding goes and how services connect.
• Networks that last beyond any funding cycle or political term.

MAKING IT REAL What people need

• Leadership at every level, from ministries to the leader on the service floor, with time to lead the coordination.
• Skills for working across boundaries, from coordination to the fiscal know-how that makes integration affordable.
• Time to plan and learn together through mentoring, reflection and peer learning across sectors and professions, with that time protected.
• Data that matter, that reflects real needs of children and families, and feeds into learning loops for sectoral and cross-sectoral improvement.
• A workforce that can stay, through inclusive recruitment, fair pay and conditions, and care for frontline wellbeing.
• Room to adapt, so that tested approaches become commitment rather than compliance.

How we work to support integration

If we take this learning seriously, the change begins in how all of us work, and each of the shifts below links back to one of the themes that shaped this conference.

Which shift is your own system furthest from?

EXPLORE IN MORE DETAIL

Go deeper into each strand: its topics, its workshops and what the rooms built.

STRAND 1 · STRUCTURE

How integration is governed

Ministries, strategies and laws open the door to integration, and on Thursday morning six workshops explored what it takes for everyone involved to walk through that door together, and to keep walking once the first enthusiasm has faded.

STRAND FOCUS

This strand examined the formal and informal structures that connect or fragment early childhood systems, focusing on how governance shapes whether and how services work together.

Guiding question: What does effective integration look like in practice, and how can it be sustained across levels of governance?

Unclear ownership of coordination surfaced again and again as something to avoid, as did policy that arrives without the means to deliver it, which one group summed up with the reminder to “add implementation plans and budgets with the policy change, otherwise nothing actually changes.”

Participants were just as clear that the people inside the early childhood system need room to do this well, asking decision makers not to ask professionals to do more, and instead to let them, and support them, to do things differently, while giving leaders the time they need to lead.

Topic 1.1 Horizontal integration across sectors (national/local level)

Health, education, social care and family support still too often sit side by side instead of working together, so what actually joins them up around a family?

TOPIC FOCUS

This topic looked at how services and sectors operating at the same level coordinate around children and families, and which governance arrangements make that easier or harder, including shared priorities across sectors, what transfers across contexts, and whether governance reaches the most marginalised children.

Contributors agreed that bringing departments together helps, although on its own it is not enough, because integration works best when services are organised around the child’s needs and when someone holds the ‘table’ together, whether that is a city, a whole-of-government strategy or a collective of funders.

WHAT EMERGED IN THE ROOM

• Coordination is work, so it must be funded. Both rooms called for the “funding of roles that sit across sectors” and for a clear coordination mandate, often at municipal level, so that coordination stops being an extra.
• Start with the child and family. A welcoming entry point and, one consistent contact can spare families from navigating fragmented services and repeating their story, while careful planning avoids gaps at age thresholds.
• Change how people work rather than adding to their workload. Participants warned against overburdening frontline staff and asked for protected time for collaboration and joint training that starts in professionals’ initial education and continues in in-service training.
• Start local and start now. Child and family hubs, developed step by step from existing premises and partnerships, emerged as the most practical model to carry forward.

THE TWO WORKSHOPS

Topic 1.2 Vertical coherence: aligning policy and practice

A strategy signed in a ministry does not change a child’s day in a nursery on its own, so what keeps the long chain from policy to practice connected?

TOPIC FOCUS

This topic addressed the gap between policy intent and the lived experience of services and families, and how integration weakens as it is translated across levels, exploring how policy frameworks, quality standards and local implementation can be aligned and sustained.

The gap between policy and practice has a name, the implementation deficit, and contributors showed how it begins to close when every policy comes with a plan for how it will work for each actor involved, when different levels of government invest in the same place, and when practice is able to feed back into policy.

WHAT EMERGED IN THE ROOM

• Co-design and co-ownership, with a lead ministry and a champion at every level, worked better than split systems where responsibility is divided.
• Feedback loops in both directions: ongoing data, supported implementation and a “dual translation” between what communities need and what government can deliver.
• From standards to principles. The second room favoured shared pedagogical principles, co-created with teachers, children and families, over rigid standards and huge overhauls, and asked for quicker cycles of improvement.
• Children’s voices in defining quality, with information on quality made public so that parents can take part.

THE TWO WORKSHOPS

Topic 1.3 Sustaining Integration: leadership and system infrastructure

Too often, integration starts as a project and ends when the funding does, so what turns cooperation into something that lasts?

TOPIC FOCUS

This topic considered the leadership and system infrastructure that allow integrated early childhood systems to last over time, from municipal coordination structures and shared protocols that outlast changes in leadership to the development of leaders and professional learning ecosystems.

Two ingredients came up again and again, permanent structures that give integration a home and leaders with the skills to keep it going, and contributors were refreshingly honest about the risks, from treating integration as an education-only issue to involving sectors only on paper and asking too much of coordinators.

WHAT EMERGED IN THE ROOM

• Continuity is the goal, “ensuring continuity across time without being completely at the mercy of election cycles,” through legislation, cross-party backing and budgets attached to policy.
• Anchor coordination where power sits, for example in the mayor’s office, with ownership at every level and shared governance beyond government.
• Give leaders time to lead. Participants asked for less administrative burden, systematic supervision and intervision, and strategic planning and networking written into leaders’ job descriptions.
• Build competent systems, not only competent leaders, with regional peer learning networks for leaders and pathways that bring talented interns into the workforce.

THE TWO WORKSHOPS

STRAND 2 · RESOURCES

How integration is financed and measured

Fragmented funding tends to build fragmented services, and on Thursday afternoon six workshops followed the money and the data around the child to see how the two could work together rather than pull apart.

STRAND FOCUS

This strand focused on the money, data, mandates and accountability mechanisms that either support or undermine integrated systems.

Guiding question: How can funding and resources align with policy and practice to support integration rather than reinforce fragmentation?

The workshops moved beyond the familiar call for “more funding” towards how existing resources could work differently, and they asked that data earn its place, since “data for the sake of data” costs the time of everyone who provides it.

Participants also cautioned that expanding services without attention to quality can do real harm, reminding us that “access without quality can even be harmful.”

• You can’t align what you can’t see. Making spending on young children visible lets different sectors plan together, from Mexico’s states to the local governments of Metro Manila.
• How money is structured matters as much as how much there is, and funders rarely pay for the coordination that integration depends on.
• Measure what connects, from continuity for families to referrals that lead to real help and evidence that leads to action, because shared measures work when they are genuinely shared.
• Prevention pays overtime, provided that funding horizons and evaluation match, and that there is long-term investment in the people who deliver it.

Topic 2.1 Financing architecture for integration

Fragmented funding builds fragmented services, so how can public budgets and philanthropy pull in the same direction around the child?

TOPIC FOCUS

This topic examined how early childhood services are financed across ministries, sectors and levels of government, and which financing choices enable more integrated and equitable systems, from making investment visible and aligning cross-sector budgets to how philanthropic and international funding interacts with government finance.

One message ran through every contribution, that you cannot align what you cannot see, and tools that make spending on young children visible allowed sectors to plan together, while even well-resourced systems discovered that the real challenge lies in how budgets are structured and not only in how much they hold.

WHAT EMERGED IN THE ROOM

• Early childhood budget tagging, so that every office serving young children makes its spending visible, with disaggregated data showing who is left behind.
• An investment scorecard rated by children and parents, and family participation in decisions on budget allocation, not only in rating results.
• Costed programmes and integrated budgets across the early years, with philanthropy taking on risk to test what can be scaled.
• Avoid short-termism and off-the-shelf models, and align the timing of policy and budget conversations, which participants found particularly difficult.

THE TWO WORKSHOPS

Topic 2.2 Mandates, accountability and measurement

Systems are held together by what they agree to be accountable for, so what should integrated systems actually measure?

TOPIC FOCUS

This topic explored how mandates, standards, accountability frameworks and data systems can build or weaken integration and what measurement infrastructure supports system-level learning, considering standards as shared tools, data that builds cross-sector accountability, and the structural problem of investing early but funding late.

The shift proposed in Lisbon was to measure the connections between services as well as the services themselves, and contributors showed how measurement done well once can serve monitoring, professional development and evaluation alike, while standards rooted in practice can draw sectors together.

WHAT EMERGED IN THE ROOM

• Data as a process for improvement, with standards used to affirm strengths and guide continuous improvement rather than as a checklist.
• Trust before standards, with data sovereignty, lighter burdens on respondents and clear explanations of why data is collected and how it will be used.
• Shared indicators agreed between actors, with municipalities acting as data “brokers” and better feedback loops between national and local levels.
• Avoid labelling children and families, collecting the wrong data, or letting the need for data override the needs of families.

THE TWO WORKSHOPS

Topic 2.3 Investing in prevention and holistic support

Everyone agrees that prevention pays, yet it is often the first thing cut, so how do we make family-centred support part of the system rather than an optional extra?

TOPIC FOCUS

This topic asked how prevention can serve as a systemic investment strategy and what conditions make holistic, community-based support sustainable, focusing on public investment rather than fragile project funding, integrated support for vulnerable families, and the difficulty of proving preventive impact.

Governments are pulled towards managing crises while prevention asks for a long view, and contributors from Ireland, Italy, Moldova, Portugal and Bradford brought evidence that the long view pays off, showing what it takes to weave support into everyday services.

WHAT EMERGED IN THE ROOM

• Resource community participation, through place-based approaches and trusted doorways built on local partnerships, starting as early as pregnancy.
• Protect prevention from political cycles with frameworks that outlast changes in government, and be honest about how long it takes for prevention to pay off.
• Address root causes rather than symptoms, instead of closing cases that later reopen, and invest in long-term peer learning rather than short project cycles.
• Family hubs and community centres offering different services, with families involved in multidisciplinary teams and test-and-learn evaluation built into everything.

THE TWO WORKSHOPS

STRAND 3 · RELATIONSHIPS

How integration is co-constructed and sustained relationally

On Friday morning, the conversation turned to what holds everything else together, from trust and a shared language between professions to families taking part as real partners in the decisions that shape their lives.

STRAND FOCUS

This strand explored the relational foundations of integration, from co-creation, participation, trust and shared language to how local innovations influence wider systems, while asking who is included and whose voices are heard.

Guiding question: How do we ensure all voices co-create solutions for integrated early childhood systems?

The six workshops shared one message, which Topic 3.3 described as moving “from fragile to robust,” away from depending on exceptional individuals and temporary funding and towards shared leadership, capable institutions and predictable resources.

Participants found that trust grows from honesty, from following through on promises and from messengers people already believe in, and one group left us with a question we are still holding close: how do we scale trust?

• Trust comes first, participation follows, with families as partners in real decisions rather than only in the consultation report, because tokenism does more harm than good.
• Trust and a shared language are infrastructure that has to be built deliberately, with structured time, reflective support and care for frontline workers.
• From personalities to institutions, local innovation lasts when it is secured in governance, law and networks connected to decision-making, rather than in one leader’s goodwill.
• A method is only as strong as the relationship it lives in, and holding too tightly to a framework builds compliance rather than commitment.

Topic 3.1 Co-creation with families and communities

Systems built around families need families at the table, not just in the consultation report.

TOPIC FOCUS

This topic looked at how families, communities and practitioners can move from being consulted to becoming genuine co-constructors of the systems that affect them, covering participatory governance and shared power as well as co-creation in fragile or resource-constrained settings, including the role of faith-based and informal actors.

Contributors described participation that reaches beyond asking for opinions to sharing real decisions, from parents writing local policy to children helping to design their city, and time after time this turned out to be exactly where integration began.

WHAT EMERGED IN THE ROOM

• From listening to influence, with communities sharing power and choosing the right people to involve, not only the “usual suspects.”
• Forward accountability, showing what changed as a result of listening, with “You said, we did” boards and results shared back with families together with action plans.
• Prepare the ground for participation with culturally safe places, home visits, mobile spaces, face-to-face contact and tools that suit families, such as WhatsApp.
• Avoid rushing trust, patronising expert approaches, putting families on the spot with policymakers, and collecting data that is not needed.

THE TWO WORKSHOPS

Topic 3.2 Trust, shared language and frontline voice

A health visitor, a teacher and a social worker can work with the same family but not being aligned with each other about what is best for the child, which is why trust and a shared language turned out to be infrastructure too.

TOPIC FOCUS

This topic explored how trust and shared understanding are built across professional, institutional and community boundaries, highlighting the role of narrative change, common language, shared pedagogical frameworks, frontline voice and workforce wellbeing.

Trust between professionals, and a language they all understand, have to be built with intention, and contributors found that training and tools alone did not change practice, whereas trust and shared understanding across levels did.

WHAT EMERGED IN THE ROOM

• Common constructs with distinct identities: each profession keeps its own identity and language, but integrated work needs shared concepts that everyone understands.
• Policy translators, “people that circulate between worlds” of children, families, practitioners and politicians, and frontline workers and elected officials visiting each other without a funding request.
• Honesty and following through, stories that make children’s learning visible, and trusted messengers rather than assuming you are one.
• Positive, strengths-based narratives rather than chasing headlines, with flatter hierarchies among professionals and with families.

THE TWO WORKSHOPS

Topic 3.3 From local innovation to system change

Local innovation is where integration is often invented, and the challenge is helping it outlive its founders, its funding and its political champions.

TOPIC FOCUS

This topic examined how locally developed integrated approaches are adapted, scaled and institutionalised and why some are diluted or lost, distinguishing scaling, which expands reach, from deepening, which influences systems, and considering how integration can withstand political cycles and changes in leadership.

Contributors described two routes, growing from the bottom up through networks and turning innovation into lasting institutions, and both depend on strengthening what already exists and on relationships that hold steady when people and politics change.

WHAT EMERGED IN THE ROOM

• From fragile to robust, moving from exceptional individuals and temporary funding to shared leadership, capable institutions and predictable resources.
• Scale horizontally and vertically, spreading approaches across communities while embedding them in policy, budgets, standards and institutional responsibilities.
• Scale deep as well as wide, with clear principles, local flexibility and networks of communities that already operate at scale, avoiding rigid replication and parallel systems.
• Invest in the people who carry it, through training, coaching, reflective spaces and good pay and conditions, and keep asking how we scale trust.

THE TWO WORKSHOPS