Government publishes review to improve babies’ and children’s healthy development

March 29, 2021

The early years review – The best start for life: a vision for the 1,001 critical days – has been led by Early Years Health Adviser Andrea Leadsom MP and sets out a vision for best practice across the health system to ensure babies and children can get the best possible start.

Leading child health experts agree the care given during the 1,001 critical days has more influence on a child’s future than at any other time in their life, and experiences during this time have a significant impact on the health, wellbeing and opportunity of children throughout life.

In order to make sure families have all the information they need and to access their children’s data and easily share it with appropriate professionals, the government will bring forward work to digitise the personal child health record, commonly known as the ‘red book’.  Digitising it will ensure information is easier to store, protect it from being lost and make it easier to share with medical staff. This will apply to every new birth from April 2023, bringing it forward a year.

Further information can be found here Government review