Co-located family services: my experience of visiting a Family Centre in Sweden
Over the past two decades, governments throughout the world have increasingly adopted co-located family support services, moving away from separate services and systems towards integrated, place-based models that bring together health, education and social supports to give children the best possible start in life.
In the UK, this approach was pioneered through Sure Start, which delivered integrated early years and family support through community-based ’one-stop’ centres in areas of higher need. More recently, England has committed to establishing Family Hubs in every local authority by April 2026, while in Scotland, initiatives such as the Whole Family Wellbeing Fund and Fairer Futures Partnership programme have prompted many areas to explore or develop family hubs. CELCIS’s Children’s Services Reform Research highlighted the value of locally branded, multi-agency co-located hubs in supporting children and families.
As practice develops, there is always new learning to discover what is working well and what is not.
Late last year I joined colleagues from CELCIS in finding out more about approaches taken in Sweden. At the International Society for the Prevention of Child Abuse & Neglect (ISPCAN) Congress in Vilnius, Lithuania, I heard from Sweden’s Association for the Promotion of Family Centres, and while visiting the Connected Children research team at Linnaeus University, we had the chance to visit a Family Centre in the city of Växjö.
Visiting Sweden’s Family Centres
Sweden’s Family Centres, known locally as ‘familjecentraler’, are local, accessible buildings where maternal health care (midwifery), child health care (health visiting), open pre-school (early learning and childcare), and children and families social work are all housed under one roof. They are open to all families from pregnancy to when the youngest child is six years old and are typically located in neighbourhoods of higher need. Their purpose is to provide early, preventative and relationship-based support, through both one-to-one and group support and activities. Where families may benefit from other services, the Family Centre practitioners support families to access these. The Family Centre we visited in Växjö was located in the centre of a neighbourhood on the outskirts of the city, which, we were told, was an area of higher need. The building itself was single storey, about 10-15 years old, and resembled a nursery, primary school or community health centre that we commonly see in Scotland. On its doorstep was a small precinct with some shops, a nursery school, and a secondary school. In short, nothing particularly stood out to me about the building or its setting.
That feeling changed when we entered the Family Centre. Met at the entrance by two of the centre’s social workers, both full of smiles, to one side, there was a room full of buggies that led onto the pre-school area where infants and their parents were playing and singing together. To the other, there was a place for us to take off our outdoor shoes, and beyond that, mothers, fathers and babies waiting to see their health visitor. The immediate feelings were of warmth, calm and welcome.
During our tour of the pre-school, a stay-and-play session was just finishing in the main room, and we saw other rooms for creative arts, reading, and for preparing and eating food together. We then met with the health visitors in the rooms used for these services, who told us about the group-based family activities they host. The centre also provides a base for midwives.
Our visit allowed us to meet with two of the three children and families’ social workers based in the Family Centre. They explained how closely the different practitioners work together, with the compact size of the centre and the shared kitchen helping to build relationships between them. They also shared some of the challenges they face: that the centre’s compact size can at times limit the number of children and families who can access the centre; and that, as a centre open to all, families who need little support may displace or deter families who most need support.
What I learned
I left feeling inspired. The Family Centre exemplified what I understand to be best practice: multi-agency practitioners working closely together in a manner that is welcoming, child- and family-centred, and strengths- and relationships-based. Co-location must have helped to build this way of working but credit cannot be given to the building alone. Rather, the key ingredient appeared to be the practitioners themselves: skilled, experienced, who exuded a collaborative way of working.
I also left realising that not all families attend Family Centres. Families may not have a Family Centre local to them (Växjö currently has just one in a city of 75,000 people), or they may choose to attend hospitals, health centres, and other nurseries for their health and childcare support. However, the aspiration within Sweden is to increase the number of these Family Centres. Based on my visit I can see why and hope that other countries, including Scotland, take a similar path.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Maria Kruse and Larrson Martina for their input to the ISPCAN Congress; Hannah Meason and Louise Eriksson at Linnaeus University for organising our visit to the Family Centre; and Helena Hjertberg and Camilla Kronholm for showing us round the Family Centre.
Short films about Sweden’s Family Centres:
Introducing the Family Centres
Roles within the Family Centres
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