Family Hub Pregnancy Grant (FHPG) ——
Project title
Family Hub Pregnancy Grant (FHPG)
Innovation hub / partnership
Child Poverty and Family Support
Project partners
Internal partners: Family Hubs and Early Years teams; Public Health; Money Advice Camden team; Strategy & Design teams.
External partners: CNWL Maternity and Health Visiting; Nesta; UCL; Institute of Health Equity.
Project dates
April 2025 – October 2026
Project description
Maternal stress is strongly associated with adverse health and developmental outcomes for babies. Providing unconditional financial support during pregnancy can help reduce stress and improve outcomes for the child, especially in low-income households.
The Family Hubs Pregnancy Grant (FHPG) is a means-tested, unconditional £500 cash grant offered proactively to low-income pregnant people in Camden. Most eligible families do not need to apply; instead, the council uses existing data to identify eligible parents and reaches out directly to let them know they can receive the grant.
A FHPG Family Navigator — a specially trained council officer who can connect participants with other support available to them — proactively contacts parents eligible for the FHPG to ensure they have received the grant and offers information and support to access a range of other services. This approach is based on evidence that greater impact may be achieved when financial support is stacked with other offers, such as parenting advice or community connection.
The evaluation will utilise a mixed methods approach; this will include randomisation of the Family Navigator offer and analysis of its impact on service use. The research team are conducting surveys, interviews and analysis of process data, as part of a theory-based evaluation of the value-add of the stacked intervention.
A toolkit is available and sets out the practical and administrative steps needed to replicate such an intervention elsewhere.
Key achievements so far
- Nearly 400 grants have been distributed
- Data collection is underway for the evaluation
- There has been significant interest from other local authorities across the country about the FHPG model
Upcoming milestones
An interim report containing high level findings is expected in March 2026.