Meet the crack team improving children's lives in Abbey Hulton and Bentilee
Celebrations have been held between Stoke-on-Trent City Council and Thrive at Five following three years of working together to improve the lives of children and families in Abbey Hulton and Bentilee. The organisation runs various groups to support early child development.
The city council has invested £1.5 million from the public health grant into the family matters programme and the NHS Integrated Care Board have invested £1 million, with wider partners providing support in kind. Ultimately, Family Matters will reduce the financial pressures from the care system and reduce the amount spent on children’s care placements.
For the past three years every year there has been an improvement in the early development score and it is hoped that it will eventually close all together. At the moment Thrive at Five are set to be in the city until 2032, providing long term certainty.
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Chief Executive of the city council Jon Rouse said: “We set ourselves a big target to half the gap between Stoke-on-Trent children and the national average for early development. So when we started there was a five percentage point gap between how many Stoke kids had reached the right level of development and nationally.
“So our aim is we half that gap at least and eventually close it completely. So Stoke-on-Trent kids have just as good a chance as any other children in the country.”
Thrive at Five Chief Executive, Aida Cable, said: “The community in Bentilee and Abbey Hulton has come together to help give every child the opportunity to thrive and achieve their potential. Parents and carers are building their skills and knowledge so they can use their power to create the best possible environment for children and make the most of the support available.
“The local network of dedicated professionals and organisations, from private, public and voluntary sector, have united to strengthen the support for children and families. Together the partnership is making a life-changing difference to local children.”
Currently the organisation provides eight stay and play groups, early education programmes and holiday clubs for children just before they start school so they can get ready to go into school. During the first six months before starting, Thrive at Five held discovery sessions and discovered there was a huge percentage of families with young children that didn’t have the opportunity to meet with other young children.
Norah Minshall, who grew up in Bentilee and worked at Eaton Park Academy now works as the Early Years Development Lead for Thrive at Five. She said: “In Bentilee for example there was only one stay and play parent baby toddler group which was in the church and was oversubscribed.
“Most other parents didn’t have anywhere to go. So that drove us to work with schools and community groups to set up high quality provision for parents and their babies to go to. So now we’ve got up to 13 groups which are supported with high quality resources.
“We didn’t want it to be like a lot of parents' previous experiences where perhaps they’d go to a dusty old hall and they’d be a box of donated toys. So we put a big effort into making sure that the resources are high quality and there’s opportunities for parents to have a drink and toast all for free.”
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