The Department told us that its childcare policy aimed to support child development and school readiness, alongside enabling parents to work, with supporting parents at home an important element.51 ‘Family hubs’, funded jointly with the Department for Health and Social Care, will be targeted in disadvantaged areas and aim to support parents.52 The Department stressed that family hubs are a relatively new initiative, but described seeing some early evidence of their impact. For example, Doncaster has seen a 1.06 times improvement in children reaching the early years foundation stage profile by age five.53 However, the Department could not yet say whether family hubs were as effective as Sure Start in supporting children from disadvantaged backgrounds, in part as the impacts on GCSE attainment from Sure Start have taken some time to crystallise, with the best evidence only emerging recently.54 The Department said it had, however used evidence from Sure Start to design the family hubs programme, for example in choosing to focus the hubs in disadvantaged areas.55 The Department noted there was a lot of enthusiasm for family hubs and expanding them would be an area for Ministers to consider.56 49 Qq 27, 47 50 Q 47 51 Q 47 52 Qq 34, 47 53 Q 50 54 Qq 48, 50 55 Q 48 56 Q 49 13 2 Understanding spending and the support needed across providers Understanding how funds are spent