Optivita Early Years

What is Optivita Early Years?

Optivita Early Years is an innovative pilot delivering services to families in the South Harrow area. Originally funded by NHS England until July 2025, the pilot has now been extended until March 2026 with Public Health funding. The project aim to focus on improving life chances for parents and babies who are living in some of the most disadvantaged areas of the borough by delivering a set of interventions in early life that can prevent the escalation of complex needs, reduce inequalities in access, and improve outcomes for children under five.

With a focus on prevention and health promotion as early as possible, the project aims to target support for families with children under five to improve health and wellbeing in later years.

How is the Early Years pilot delivered in Harrow?

With a history of delivering local services working with the Harrow maternity and early parenting communities, Blossom has been awarded the contract to deliver the Hyper Local Preventative Care Team (HLPCT) service. Blossom is committed to empowering and supporting expectant parents on their journey to parenthood through the various services they deliver.

The HLPCT is part of the Central Harrow Integrated Neighbourhood Team (INT). This predominantly outreach-focused team comprises of community health and wellbeing workers (CHWWs), a parent/carer, baby and children social prescriber link worker (SPLW) and an operational project lead.

While the workers are not Council or NHS employees, they will work closely with GP Direct and the Shaftesbury Medical centre GP practices, and the SPHERE and Collaborative Primary Care Networks who are key partners in this pilot.

What do the community health and wellbeing workers do?

Inspired by the Family Health Strategy devised in Brazil in the 1990’s, CHWWs will crucially support the health and well-being needs of families within their own homes. Visiting households each month within a defined geographical area in South Harrow, CHWWs will ensure families receive tailored wellbeing and holistic maternal and child health advice and support and are signposted to relevant services where needed.

As this is a pilot, CHWWs will work with a specific group of households with pregnant people and families with children under six, registered with the two partner GP practices. Families will be contacted by their surgery with more information if they live in one of the pilot postcode roads. Alternatively, south harrow families can email optivita@blossomantenatal.com to see if they are part of the pilot area.

What will the social prescriber link worker do?

The SPLW works with professionals to support parents, babies and children 0-2 years old, including high-risk families. They focus on supporting women at risk of perinatal mental illness during the antenatal and postnatal period.

They will offer personalised support to enable families to have the best outcomes, including earlier ante-natal bookings, uptake of immunisations and breastfeeding post 6-8 weeks.

The SPLW will also be running weekly postnatal drop-in support sessions with a qualified antenatal educator for those families registered with a GP in either the SPHERE or Collaborative Primaty Care Networks.

Working with referred families from across the Central Integrated Neighbourhood Team area, with an average of 6-12 contacts over 3-6 months, they will meet mothers/families at Hillview Children’s Centre in South Harrow. Please see leaflets for further details

Weekly Drop-in Postnatal Support Sessions

Postnatal Support Sessions 2026

One-to-One Support

Information for professionals
Information for parents

Expected outcomes

• Improved access to services which families will benefit from in the early years and especially during pregnancy and the first 1000 days.
• Improved uptake of routine antenatal and postnatal health and development reviews (Healthy Child Programme) and immunisations.
• Improved identification and support for families who need additional help especially where there are multiple needs requiring a co-ordinated, integrated response.
• Empowerment of individual families through parent training and access to small grants for community-initiated health and wellbeing projects through the Optivita Innovation Fund.

To find out more:

Website: www.blossomantenatal.com
Email: optivita@blossomantenatal.com
Instagram: www.instagram.com/chww_harrow