Royaltyfreecliick.com/ShutterstockThe UK government’s new ten-year health plan for England prioritises tackling health inequalities through local preventive measures. One promising approach is to build on the strengths of migrant families by fostering neighbourhood peer support – particularly for underserved communities. In wealthy countries, families migrating from low-income countries are often excluded or marginalised in society and lack social support. They often have highly stressed pregnancies and many experience barriers to effective healthcare. For migrant families, the stresses of migration, poverty, and discrimination can combine to negatively affect their children’s wellbeing and life chances, such as employment. This matters for a large number of children: one in five children born in England and Wales has a parent born in a low-income country.Promoting early child development improves life chances and saves money. This works best when started before birth, in the “first 1001 days” of life – the period from conception until a child’s second birthday. The 1,001 days start before birth. oliveromg/Shutterstock The best programmes are available to everyone, but make extra effort to help the people who need them the most. An example is Sure Start, which was introduced in 1999 to support children aged up to the age of five and their families living in disadvantaged areas in England. Read more: How England's scrapped Sure Start centres boosted the health and education of disadvantaged children Sure Start centres foster social support for parents and help children’s early social and emotional development, as well as providing places for families to get help from a range of health, social, financial and other services. The evidence of Sure Start’s long-term benefits continues to accumulate. However, austerity measures in recent years have seen a massive reduction in Sure Start centres across the country.Promoting social connectedness and enhancing support may be especially important for migrants and families from communal or collective child-rearing cultures. Our research has shown that better social support for pregnant women from migrant communities in Bradford is linked positively with their children’s social and emotional development. We have also found that making social connections can be a turning point for parents’ wellbeing, which in turn helps their children’s opportunities for play and interaction. Helping communities build social support and connectedness therefore may be a powerful way to bring about change.Social connectionPeer support (from people with similar backgrounds) is a very effective way to deliver services and improve lives, including for migrants. This is especially the case when this support can build trust.Working with communities in Bristol over ten years, we have developed ways for communities, agencies and researchers to work together to activate family strengths through a programme called Find Your Village. Through peer support in the first 1,001 days, we aim to improve family wellbeing, child development, community connectedness, engagement with services, and longer-term life chances. Find Your Village. Our approach involves spending time with families, helping them solve problems and draw on their own strengths. Peer supporters also organise group activities and advocate for improvements in neighbourhood environments. Meeting others from the same neighbourhood can help in lots of ways. For example, free, unstructured play helps children’s physical, social, and emotional wellbeing. At the same time, parents benefit from meeting each other. They can form secure relationships and grow in confidence raising their children, which brings many benefits. Parents can then in turn start to help others and give back to the community.Many factors may challenge how accessible and helpful health services are for communities with migrant heritage. And not all social support is helpful. What helps both services and communities feel inclusive to families deserves continued attention. There are some clear messages about how voluntary sector and government agencies can work effectively to reduce inequalities. Action to reduce inequalities works best when agencies and underserved communities work together to build and maintain trust. Rigid, externally developed programmes are likely to lack cultural appropriateness and contextual fit and are therefore less likely to be taken up by groups who feel less connected in society. Partnership working, and flexibility to adapt to local contexts are therefore key. Although our focus is on migrant communities, Find Your Village ideas may be relevant in other contexts of structural inequality and disadvantage. Could resourcing peer support to activate the strengths of families and communities help in the design and delivery of the new government health plans?Tom Allport has previously received funding from the National Institute of Health Research. Debbie Watson has received funding from the Economic and Social Research Council and the Arts and Humanities Research Council. She is affiliated with the Labour Party.