Surrey Child and Family Wellbeing Service
In 2025, HCRG Care Group began to deliver an integrated children’s service in Surrey. We are addressing waiting times and building digitally enabled neighbourhood teams that support children and families across the county. The focus is on transformation that makes a new standard of service possible: so families only need to tell their story once, access support more easily, and receive consistent high quality care no matter where they live.
Surrey Child and Family Wellbeing Service
HCRG Care Group hit the ground running in April 2025, delivering Surrey’s children’s services while designing a transformation in how they’re delivered. Surrey’s previous model had become difficult to manage with a complex governance structure and rising costs, and commissioners wanted the service to be simplified so it could deliver integration and innovation at scale – and ensure consistent high quality services across the county with sustainable staffing.
Visit Service WebsiteServices include:
- Multidisciplinary Healthy Family Teams built upon the Healthy Child Programme
- Children’s Community Services (Occupational Therapy, Speech and Language Therapy, Therapies, Paediatrics, PIMHS)
This service is led by
Robert Flack
Regional Director
Having undertaken leadership roles in the commercial, not for profit, social enterprise and NHS sectors, Robert now works to continuously improve our teams, relationships and services at HCRG Care Group.
From day one of our contract, a single point of access was ready to go.
Families and young people now use one number and one email address instead of navigating what used to be well over a hundred contact emails. As a result, access is far, far easier for service users, and the number of abandoned calls has plummeted along with call waiting times.
We’re also undergoing a transformation in workforce and workplaces
The original model in Surrey was divided by organisational and geographical silos – and at times entire service lines could be separate from the broader community services. Now health visitors, school nurses and special school nurses are working in one integrated structure, supported by unified policies and what will soon be a single patient record.
Each team is given autonomy to adapt care to its local area, crossing boundary lines when needed. We’re addressing how traditional lines can be further blurred through the integrated Family Hub model that our work in Essex successfully piloted for years, showing it could change community health for good.
Another upfront investment was a shift from analogue to digital
With a digital front door in the form of a county website and a Surrey-specific app, the Digital Front Door extends access. Parents can message clinicians, track health information, and use online self-care tools on areas such as diet, immunisation and mental health. We’re developing these resources with local partners, including VCFSE groups, to ensure they are trusted and inclusive.
As part of the digital push, we’re also introducing robotic process automation and other forms of automation into backend systems, creating efficiencies that enable staff to deliver high quality services, in line with our Quality Promise.
Sustainable staffing is a focus and we’re quickly growing our Continuing Healthcare team
This provides night and sometimes night-and-day support for children with significant needs, such as the use of a ventilator. We’re addressing how we can double care hours from what they were at the start of the contract.
Another area where we’re addressing capacity is in development paediatrics, and we’re working to mix skills and make the most of specialist roles. We’re also drawing on learnings from Lancashire’s well documented success in creating neurodiversity pathways that offer support to families while they’re waiting for clinical assessments.
Looking ahead
We will continue to strengthen digital access and further the development of new Family Hubs with partners such as Barnardo’s, following the model we piloted and proved in Essex.
Visit Service WebsiteWhat’s happening at a glance
One single point of access for families, replacing 150+ contact routes and dramatically reducing initial wait times.
Integrated teams now working within a single structure and with a single patient database.
Development of Family Hubs with Barnardo’s, Early Help, and other VCFSE partners.
Digital front door with health visitor messaging, health tracking and self-management tools.
Designing new pathways to reduce neurodiversity assessment backlogs, based on successful work in Lancashire.
Increasing capacity to deliver children’s continuing healthcare.
Our partners for this service
