Here at OLSB we are pleased to work with Thrive at Five who are a charity who bring local communities, parents and carers together, in the places where families face some of the biggest challenges, to support every child and build a national model that can benefit children in every community. Here’s how we do it.

Unlocking the power of parents and carers

Parents and carers are the first and most important influence on children’s development but often feel detached from a fragmented system of potential support. We put parents and carers at the heart of our work, focusing on building their wellbeing, confidence and skills as an essential stepping-stone to positive childhood development.

Parents and carers co-design our activities and have the opportunity to work in our local teams as Parent Connectors to help bridge the gap between caregivers and the network of support and services.

Strengthening the network of community organisations around children and families

It takes a community to raise a child, so our local teams enable collaboration between the public, private and voluntary organisations that support parents and carers, and have the power to positively shape early childhood development. We also help to build stronger relationships between these organisations and parents and carers, and strengthening the understanding of, and support for, early childhood development.

We join the dots between those locally with a focus on early intervention, including midwives, health visitors, family support workers, social care workers, early years practitioners, speech and language therapists, mental health experts, nurseries and schools, community organisations and volunteers, faith groups and more.

Being guided by evidence and data

Robust evidence and data underpin our collaborative work, from a data-informed exploration of the early years landscape in places we work and identifying the best evidence-informed approaches to continually testing and refining our practices.

Achieving a good level of development by age five

We aim to increase the number of children in a community achieving a good level of development by age five. In our English pathfinder sites, we use the measure taken the end of the reception year against the Early Years Foundation Stage Profile. 

This is a holistic assessment of children’s progress, such as their social and emotional development, early communication and language skills. This early years assessment of developmental milestones is a strong indicator of what a child will go on to achieve through academic and working life, as well as their health, relationships and ability to manage life challenges.

These stepping-stones are:

Focusing on five steps towards a good level of development at age five

In all the activities and approaches that we develop with communities, we target five stepping-stones to build the foundations that every child should have in place for life and learning at age five.

• strong parent-child relationships
• good parental wellbeing
• rich home-learning environments
• improved early communication and language
• quality early education & care.

For Further information :

Stoke Thrive at Five | Stoke-on-Trent | Facebook

Stoke-on-Trent - Thrive At Five