AllChild beyond London: an update from Greater Manchester
It’s been three months since we publicly announced our pilot in the communities of Leigh, Atherton and Tydesley, and well over a year since we first began conversations with Wigan Local Authority about a potential partnership. Our first expansion outside of West London represents an inflection point for AllChild: not only do we hope to create strong impact for children, young people and families, but we hope to gather learnings about how AllChild’s model can translate to different local contexts. We asked our Regional Director, Jenny Muter, to update us about our progress in Wigan as we approach the start of delivery in September.
A co-design approach
Over the past year, the AllChild has worked closely with Wigan Local Authority and has held a number of listening workshops with children, families and community and voluntary sector organisations in order to ensure that our offer in Wigan reflects the community’s needs and complements existing local provision. This co-design process has emphasised the extent to which children, families and schools in Leigh would particularly value initiatives to support children’s emotional wellbeing and mental health at home, school and in the community.
As such, while the delivery of our Impact Programme will look broadly similar in London and Wigan, key elements have been tailored to the local context. In Wigan we will emphasise social and emotional support during the first year of the two-year programme, bringing in academic support only as appropriate. There will also be a particular emphasis in Wigan on whole-family working, with Link Workers integrated with the local Early Help system and able to initiate and lead on Early Help support.
We have centred the voices of young people within the design of our programme, and have worked with a local organisation, Media Cubs, who support young people to direct and record video content. Through this project, young people have distilled the findings of the listening workshops into a video that gives their perspectives about what it’s like to grow up in Leigh. This video will be used during the onboarding and training of the Link Work team, and will be shared publicly soon!
Building a team
We have also spent much of the past few months ensuring that we have a strong team in place to start our delivery for September. I joined as Regional Director at the start of May and, along with colleagues from London, have been working to recruit a team of Hub Leads and Link Workers and place each within a partner school.
We are delighted not only that we have ended the term with a full complement of Link Workers in place, but that we have recruited some absolutely fantastic colleagues. Our incoming Link Workers, many of whom are from Wigan, have a range of professional backgrounds and experiences, including teaching, Early Help, CAMHS, family support and work with other children and youth charities. All are empathetic, responsive to the needs of children, young people and families, and passionate about AllChild’s vision that together, every child and young person can flourish.
As in London, all of our Link Workers will benefit from AllChild’s comprehensive training programme, including monthly clinical supervisions. Additional training, including shadowing of the Early Help team, will be provided in partnership with the Council. We will also welcome Anta Vakiari, an experienced London Link Worker, who will be working with the Wigan team as Delivery Excellence Manager, ensuring high-quality practice and consistency between programme delivery in Wigan and London.
Engaging our school partners
We will be launching our programme in seven schools in Leigh in September 2024, with a similar number of schools in Atherton and Tydesley beginning delivery in September 2025. Our seven pioneer schools include four primary schools and three secondary schools, and we have been working closely with them over the past few months to ensure that we have everything in place for September - data to help us identify which children and young people could most benefit from the AllChild programme, information about which Delivery Partners would best complement the school’s existing offer, a Link Worker matched to the school, and space in which Link Workers and Delivery Partners can operate.
Throughout the setup process, school leaders have been consistently responsive, engaged and supportive of AllChild. Strong partnerships between AllChild and schools are crucial to driving impact for children and young people, and we are committed to delivering against school leaders’ high expectations and embedding AllChild within our pilot schools.
Leveraging the community
As in London, Delivery Partners will form a core component of our programme in Wigan, and we are delighted that we have ten initial Delivery Partners contracted to begin work in schools in the autumn and spring terms. These partners were identified in response to the needs identified during the co-design process, as well as information about schools’ existing offers. Five are local organisations based in Wigan and Leigh, three are regional providers, and two are national organisations.
To ensure that we are able to effectively link children and families to other local provision and existing sources of support, we have also been building relationships with other statutory services, such as CAMHS and Early Help, and the vibrant local voluntary and community sector. This has included being part of discussions about how the local voluntary and community sector, including AllChild, can work alongside the Council to deliver a universal Family Hub offer in Leigh.
Capturing learnings to inform future directions
Launching in a new place outside of West London will also provide us with valuable learning, and we are determined to capture this to inform our future strategy. In particular, we are keen to explore the balance between delivering to a core programme and flexing in response to local needs and priorities: which elements of delivery should be core to our work, and which can and should adapt? As such, we are currently in the process of appointing an external Learning Partner, who will work alongside us to document the learnings from the setup and initial delivery phases, before conducting a mixed-methods evaluation of the impact of the programme in Leigh and Atherton.
Looking ahead to September
We end the school year with the setup phase largely complete, and delivery ready to start in our first seven schools in September. The enthusiasm and support from the Council, schools and local communities has been marked, and has enabled the setup process to be largely smooth. While there will undoubtedly be a few bumps in the road once delivery begins, we hope that the shared vision that exists for children, young people and families, and the strong relationships that have been built during the co-design and setup phases, will enable us to navigate any future challenges as and when they emerge.
We are very much looking forward to welcoming our new team of Link Workers in August and starting our work in schools in September.
