Working to change the ‘Childhood Lottery’ odds

By Ed Vainker

A version of this article was originally published in Tes Magazine.

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When the Children’s Commissioner for England published a list of the 20 hardest places to grow up, some of the place names were familiar to the Reach Foundation.

Here, their Managing Director Ed Vainker talks about the people behind the places who are working to change the odds for the young people in their communities.

He argues that schools are playing a vital role in linking parts of the workforce up around what every child in every place needs, as shown by our Map of the Children’s Workforce.

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When the Children’s Commissioner for England sounded the emergency alarm for children recently, she published a list of the 20 hardest places to grow up.

“The current approach to policymaking has failed children growing up in places like Middlesbrough,” her report, The Childhood Lottery, says, also listing Hounslow, Bradford and Nottingham as similarly challenging places to be a child.

The difficulties for children in the areas listed aren’t news to anyone living there, especially not its young people and those who work to support them each day.

These are difficulties we see every day at the Reach Foundation, where we engage with young people through our Cradle-to-Career clusters of schools around the country.

“It’s hard compared to other areas. It seems a bit neglected,” Mason told us as he prepared to begin sixth-form study on one of these schools in Middlesbrough, having struggled to find entry-level work.

Video: The Reach Foundation speaks to Mason about growing up in Middlesbrough, and how his school has been working to open up opportunities for young people locally.

The children’s workforce on the front line

As a high-level report, The Childhood Lottery discusses policies, services, footprints, outcomes.

But behind each place listed is an entire workforce of professionals who work to make things better for children in challenging circumstances.

This month our colleagues at the Centre for the Children’s Workforce published a Map of the Children’s Workforce. The map looks beyond service siloes and makes visible the body of support around children as they grow.

When I look at this map, I see a similar picture to what the commissioner has outlined: systems and services that don’t always connect the way they should, leaving gaps and confusion for children and their families to navigate with great difficulty.

I also see holes in the data about the people who support babies, children and young people. Here, vital contributions from the voluntary sector and more informal roles go virtually uncounted.

But in these places and communities taking a more local approach offers a vital shared identity for professionals and services. It allows them to get beyond service remits and shape their offer around the needs of the children in their neighbourhoods.

And I see the vital role that schools play in anchoring these efforts in the day-to-day of children’s lives.

Schools are at the heart of the work to change the odds

In Middlesbrough, this type of collective, cross-community work is well underway.

When Phil Latham, CEO of Endeavour Academies Trust, where Mason was continuing his studies, started looking beyond the school gates, he found “really optimistic people who had a sense of ambition for young people in Middlesbrough.”

Phil is one leader of hundreds we have worked with as a Cradle-to-Career Partner. It’s a programme that recognises that, in our communities, good schools are absolutely essential, but they cannot address every challenge children face alone.

In an attempt to address challenges that go beyond the school gates, the trust set up several convening partnerships with local services, groups and businesses to develop further support, including with the course that Mason joined. It focuses on supporting over-16s with routes to employment.

“They all want to be part of this to help these students,” said one employer about himself and other businesses involved, “to show them: there are opportunities, you could build your future here.”

That is what partnership makes possible. A single school would struggle to design a course like this on its own, while single employers in Middlesbrough were struggling to reach young people like Mason.

“If schools embrace that role, they can use it to connect up a workforce that is currently less than the sum of its parts.”

Since completing the course, Mason has been offered a place to train as a qualified electrician. It’s just one example of many we’ve seen over the past six years working with schools to develop Cradle-to-Career support.

That’s because schools are uniquely positioned to play this wider and deeper role in their communities: they’re trusted, they’re universal and they work with families for a long period of time.

They are really well positioned to be coordinating, convening, creating that consistency in relationships, and connecting up the services that their communities need. If they embrace that role, they can use it to connect up a workforce that is currently less than the sum of its parts.

But schools can’t do it alone

The children’s commissioner is right: children across every town and community need more from the systems and services around them. And it is urgent. This is not the role of schools alone, nor can it be down to efforts of a heroic few.

“Children across every town and community need more from the systems and services around them.”

But it can be done in partnership - for every child in every place. Schools, health and care professionals, families, local services and employers, working together, as one workforce with the children at the centre.

What they need now are policies and systems that back them: policies that count this work in how schools and services are judged, that fund the time it takes to do it, and that share the data that lets a place see its children whole.

They need a system that backs them not to beat the odds but to change the odds.

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This article is part of a series of reflections and responses to our Map of the Children’s Workforce from leaders and practitioners. Subscribe below to hear about new articles, or view the growing series.

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