BRADFORD will use a £49 million lottery grant to develop an integrated "early years pathway" for babies and young children in some of the city's most deprived areas.

The Better Start Bradford partnership, led by Bradford Trident, shared their ideas this week during a two-day conference at the Kala Sangam Arts Centre.

The meeting provided an opportunity for the five Better Start programmes across the UK - Bradford, Blackpool, Nottingham, Lambeth, and Southend-on-Sea - to discuss best practice ahead of the projects officially starting on April 1.

Better Start Bradford is a ten-year programme which will work with families in Bowling and Barkerend, Bradford Moor, and Little Horton, focusing on about 20,000 children, from before birth to three years old.

Within the three wards - where about 1,430 babies are born each year - there are high rates of infant mortality and child poverty, low school readiness, and high rates of domestic violence and child protection orders.

The project is headed up by Bradford Trident, alongside partner organisations such as Bradford Council, the NHS, and West Yorkshire Police.

Better Start is also working alongside the Born in Bradford study, which has been following 13,500 babies since 2007, and whose director, John Wright, was a speaker on the first day of the conference.

Also speaking at the event was Michael Jameson, strategic director for Children's Services at Bradford Council, who said the theme of the conference was around innovation, and how the five pilots could learn from each other.

"Better Start Bradford is ready to go on April 1, but there is a broader ambition to use the investment and learning from the three wards this focuses on, to change what we're doing across the whole district," he said.

"We want to move towards an early years pathway, getting our services working together better, such as health visiting, midwifery, social care, and schools and education.

"Instead of focusing on buildings and services, as we may have done historically, we want to focus on people, and one of Bradford's strengths is its engagement on a community level.

"It's a rich opportunity, and the ambition is that when children start school, they are ready to go, and ready to learn.

"If you get that right, other issues such as health and parenting are also addressed, giving children the best possible start in life."

Ben Lewing, an implementation adviser for The Early Intervention Foundation, told delegates about the importance of effective intervention during the early years.

"It is about connecting together the different pieces of the puzzle that make up a support system for families," he said.

"If you have people and groups working separately and not sharing what they know, it doesn't work.

"We talked about what we had learnt in other areas up and down the country, and how they have joined that system together."

Bradford was awarded the largest share of the £215million Better Start Investment from the Big Lottery Fund in June last year, with the money being used to pay for activities to improve children’s communications, to help them be more active and eat better, and to be loved and feel secure through their relationships with parents and carers.