Using behavioural science to promote engagement with family focused services

Abstract

Family hubs are the structures through which local authorities deliver both universal and targeted family-focused services. They are designed to support families with children and young people aged 0-19 to overcome difficulties and build stronger relationships by accessing a broad and integrated range of early help.

But such services can only help those who engage with them, and many underserved groups face multiple barriers to engagement.

In this talk, I will describe a series of collaborative behavioural science studies with local authorities, conducted for the Department of Education, aimed at increasing engagement with services delivered by family hubs. I will focus on:

1. a project conducted with Sheffield City Council, where we developed and evaluated effective messaging to promote a support group for new fathers of infants aged 0-6 months;
2. a project conducted with the London Borough of Redbridge, where we re-designed and evaluated the invitation and referral process for the statutory 2-2.5 year health visitor review.

I will describe the process of co-designing the interventions using the Capability, Opportunity, and Motivation model of Behaviour (COM-B, Michie et al., 2014), and quantitative evaluations of intervention effectiveness. 

I will conclude by drawing together findings across 8 different studies, from which we have developed the Behavioural Science Toolkit for Engagement (BeST Engage), the evaluation of which has just commenced, funded by £1.5M from NIHR.

Speaker

Abigail Millings, Professor of Applied Social Psychology, Head of the Centre for Behavioural Science and Applied Psychology (CeBSAP) at Sheffield Hallam University

I completed my PhD in 2008 at the University of East Anglia, held an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Bristol 2008-2009, and then went on to work as a postdoctoral researcher on a large RCT or school-based group delivered preventive CBT for depression. From 2010-12 I was the Senior Psychologist for Ultrasis Uk Ltd, designing and evaluating online interventions for common mental health problems in the context of an EC Framework 7 funded project. I then secured a lectureship at the University of Sheffield 2013, where I stayed until moving to Sheffield Hallam University in 2020, initially as Senior Research Associate, then as Associate Professor from 2022, and Professor from 2023. I became Head of CeBSAP in 2025. CeBSAP is a team of 8 research staff who work collaboratively across multiple externally funded projects, including contract research for local and national government departments, and research activities funded by UKRI (and similar).