Best Start in Life

Coventry is committed to giving every child a Bold Start and a Bright Future. This ambition sits at the heart of our city’s drive to reduce inequalities and improve long‑term outcomes for all families. In a context of rapid demographic change, increasing diversity, and ongoing social and economic pressures, we must come together as one system to support children and families from pregnancy through to school entry.

Coventry’s Best Start Family Hubs and strong partnership arrangements provide the foundations for a truly integrated early years system. By bringing together health, early education, public health, SEND services, Families First Partnerships and community, voluntary and faith‑based providers, we can ensure families receive timely, coordinated and effective support. Our Marmot commitment reinforces a whole‑system focus on tackling inequalities to ensure all children get the best start in life (BSiL).

Coffee Tots serves many families in Coventry to have the Best Start in Life

Coffee Tots is a community offer in the heart of Coventry offering holistic support to many parents and children, every weekday. They are a valued member of the Best Start in Life network and partner with the Best Start Family hubs, delivering high quality parenting support and child focused learning and development sessions.  They also host one of the city’s Borromi Toy libraries which are high quality toys and resources for children and parents to play together, help with communication development and promote a positive home learning environment.

One family that has used these resources are a single parent who has recently moved back to Coventry after living abroad with partner for 1 ½ years and her two preschool sons and the family are currently living in temporary accommodation. Originally the family are from the Middle East, and the Coffee Tots team have worked with the family when they previously lived in Coventry before the second child was born.  They had come to Coffee Tots as it was their safe space as a family previously and they don’t know many people in Coventry.  Mum wanted to see familiar faces after the upset of moving/lots of change for the family in recent months and to have both space for the boys to play, and things for them to play with.  The team invested in rebuilding their relationship with the families, listening and supporting as she adjusted to living back in the UK and helping with the children.

The older son really engaged with the play session and using the Borromi toy bags. There was no common language for the families taking part in the session and so play was the main means for communication. We used the socks bag and started off leading the session but letting the children gradually take the lead in play which worked well. These resources and the Coffee Tots session was a great way for the children to engage with colour, shapes and patterns which the children loved. It was also an easy way for mum to play with both boys, and they all really enjoyed the session as a family unit. With so much going on mum has struggled to find head space to be with her children, this session gave her the opportunity to put all these things on one side and to properly focus on the boys, something which she has been struggling to do.  The family were able to all relax and enjoy each other’s company.

Coffee Tots is a fantastic place for parents and children to play, talk and learn together, with the support by compassionate and culturally competent staff that are helping to ensure every child in Coventry can have a bold start and a bright future, whatever their circumstances and needs.