Topic: Working together to develop Children’s Communities – Karen Laing, Newcastle University
Resources: You can download Karen’s slides
Summary: A Children’s Community (or Children’s Zone) brings together a range of existing services in a specific geographical area to work in a co-ordinated and holistic way to tackle childhood disadvantage from cradle to career across all the contexts in which children live and learn. It builds on an understanding of how the place children live impacts on their wellbeing, ensuring that all environments that children experience support their learning and development in order to create a ‘tipping point’ where success becomes the norm. All organisations could be involved who provide a service for children and/or their families to enhance their wellbeing (e.g. housing, GP practices, Sure Start, schools, voluntary organisations).
Karen will explain the concept of a Children’s Community, and present her experiences of being involved in the development of children’s communities in two regions of the North East of England. She will reflect on the role of resilience both from the point of view of the workforce, and the children and young people they work with, and facilitate discussion about what messages are relevant to Blackpool.
Biography: Karen is Senior Research Associate at Newcastle University based in the Research Centre for Learning and Teaching. She specialises in how societal structures, institutions and practices impact on vulnerable or disadvantaged children, young people, families and communities. She has been part of the development of Children’s Communities in the North East of England, working in partnership with local organisations, and has recently been helping Blackpool HeadStart with their evaluation strategy.
Who might be most interested: Academics, practitioners, teachers, researchers, students, parents, carers, community workers, volunteers, public sector workers, young people, service users.
This event took place on Monday 20 November 2017 in Blackpool.
The Resilience Forum is for ANYBODY (with a pulse!) involved with or interested in resilience research!
