EIF has created the Early Years Transformation Academy (EYTA), an innovative and strengths-based approach to planning the local maternity and early years system which applies the latest evidence.

The Academy will help local areas to focus on what families and communities do for themselves alongside a shared responsibility across health, education and social care services for early child outcomes. It will bringing the right people together at a local level to build a shared vision of what maternity and early years services should be like in the future, offering a coherent response to local issues, an investment in the longer term, an opportunity for leadership development, an independent lens to support and challenge, and the opportunity to share local strengths on a national stage.

The Academy is built around a core group of local commissioners and service leaders from the local area who work as a team to review and redesign their local system. It uses a combination of online learning, face-to-face design workshops and practical application in the local context across four modules: preparing for change, identifying vulnerable populations, system planning, and measuring impact.

Local areas are invited to work with EIF to identify whether they can benefit from participating in the Academy, with initial expressions of interest welcomed by 15 February 2019.