Little Moments

The Department for Education (DfE), in partnership with the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) has launched its Start for Life ‘Little Moments Together’ campaign. The campaign aims to educate parents about the importance of brain development in the first five years of a child’s life, and the crucial role they play, with advice and tips from Start for Life.

Too many children in the UK start school developmentally months behind their peers, particularly in speech and language ability. This gap often widens over time particularly in disadvantaged groups, with children who have poor vocabulary skills at age five being less likely to succeed academically. They are also up to twice as likely to be unemployed in their thirties.

By focusing on behaviours that can easily be integrated into their busy daily routines, the campaign aims to illustrate a ‘way of being’ to parents, showing them that sharing simple, child-led ‘serve and return’ moments together throughout the day has a big impact.

By directing parents to the Start for Life website, they will find simple ideas from other parents on how to build these little moments into each day. It includes lots of example of tips and activities for parents to do with children at different ages. It also signposts parents to the relevant in-person support available in their local communities. As part of the campaign’s resources, a new film has also been released to explain how children’s brains develop during the early years, and the crucial role parents play through all the little moments they spend together with their child.