Thriving Babies Brains: a workshop on early years neuroscience
It’s not often that 100 early years practitioners, local authority and national leaders in childhood neuroscience come together in Stoke-on-Trent....
Impact Report
July 23 - June 24
Welcome to our impact report highlights June 2023-2024
As we move into our fourth year as a charity, ready for new partnerships in new places, we are proud of our growth, learning and progress so far. This progress reflects the joint efforts of so many local partners – families, local faith and community organisations, early years practitioners and health visitors, nurseries and schools. The impact we have seen is a testament to what is possible when communities work together in a more joined-up way and shows that it takes a village to raise a child. It is also thanks to all those who have supported this work, their generosity and shared vision. We are so grateful for them joining us on this journey.
We hope this impact report gives you an insight into how, from summer 23-24, we worked towards our vision of a society where all children can thrive and achieve their potential.
Thrive at Five supports approximately 2500 children aged five and under in each of our two current pathfinder areas of Stoke-On-Trent and Redcar & Cleveland, along with their parents and carers and the whole community around them.
In Stoke-on-Trent we focus on the electoral wards of Bentilee and Abbey Hulton. Stoke-On-Trent is the 12th most deprived authority area in England: 39% of children in the ward of Abbey Hulton are living in poverty, as are 36% of children in Bentilee, with household incomes 60% below the national average. We first started working in the area in 2021, and since then we have seen significant progress towards a number of our intermediate outcomes.
Parents as Early Education Partners (Peep)
The Peep Learning Together intervention has a 20-year track record of helping children and parents to achieve their potential and is on the Department of Education approved list of interventions for use in Family Hubs and the Start for Life programme. This year, we’ve funded training and supported the development of 20 practitioners to deliver Peep sessions in parent, baby and toddler settings.
“The sessions are broken down into easy-to-understand strands and give specific activities to support each section, and they can be done with things you will have at home. Parents and carers can share their ideas and things that have worked well or not worked quite as well. I feel this helps to build up their confidence in their own abilities too and empowers them to help others.”
- Mandy, Group Leader in parent, baby and toddler group, Stoke-on-Trent
Learn More
Peep groups are small, informal sessions run by trained leaders in local settings. Each fun-filled session is designed to raise awareness and model how singing, talking, playing and sharing books and stories helps to strengthen parent-child relationships and develop children’s listening, talking and later literacy.
Because Peep sessions are flexible, practitioners can tailor the length and content to the needs of the families taking part.
Our pilot work using Peep included pop-up Peep sessions run by our Peep coordinator in the community— in GP surgery waiting rooms, at pregnancy scan clinics, in soft play centres, and in local chemists. A structured session has been running at one group, Babbling Babies, helping practitioners to learn what works best in our community.
Nuffield Early Language Intervention (NELI)
Good early language and communication skills mean young children can express their needs and feelings and can interact with other children and adults. These skills are also key to helping children learn to read. When children don’t have these skills, it impacts other areas of their development such as school readiness, putting them behind their peers from the start of school.
“I worked with a little girl who suffered with selective mutism. From the moment I sat down with the group, I could tell we had made a connection. Her smile told me this, no words needed. I would collect her from the classroom in silence, with not even a hello, but by reducing her anxiety, this little girl began to talk and I found it hard to stop her sometimes! Her anxiety switched her voice off in social situations, but within our little group she felt confident to speak out.”
- Jacqueline Thedens, NELI and Staffordshire University Student
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In our Stoke-on-Trent community, over a third of reception children in the seven schools we work with were below the expected early language and communication skill level for their age. We have seen a transformation in outcomes by providing capacity for careful implementation of NELI.
Working closely with the schools and Staffordshire University, we looked for ways to help. We knew that NELI is proven to be effective in improving reception-age children’s early language, communication and speech skills. However, due to the overwhelming number of children in their classes who weren’t meeting developmental markers, teachers simply didn’t have the resource to provide extra support and interventions for all the children who needed it. Thanks to a collaborative university and supportive staff in our partner schools, we recruited and trained students from the university to deliver NELI to children who needed extra support, which they are continuing to do so to this day.
The response from the school staff, students and children involved in this new initiative has been overwhelmingly positive. Every child was screened at the beginning of the school year and every child that needed support received it. Overall, 97% of children who received NELI improved their communication skills, and there was a 62 percentage point increase in the number of children whose language skills were developing as expected.
With our support, the schools, who are managed by different Trusts, have also collaborated for the first time to co-fund two peripatetic staff. They work across all seven schools to support the students and ensure the high-quality delivery of NELI, and the project has secured support to be delivered for a third year in 2024-25.
Parents and carers are at the heart of what we do. Their voices guide our work and their actions are key to their children’s early years experiences – experiences which will shape their development. We want to work with as many parents as possible, alongside our partners, so we can transform the outcomes of many more babies and children.
" The most valuable part of attending Thrive at Five sessions is being in an environment with other parents /carers and children of similar ages, doing something fun and engaging! Songs, toys, activities and more while connecting with your child and having an opportunity to talk to other parents from the area... everyone is so welcoming, it’s always a safe space and you can get involved as much or as little as you like, and there’s always a hot drink waiting.”
- Paige, Mum of two
Adam's story
The past year for Adam, a proud dad to a one-year-old and who is also currently expecting his second child, has been difficult. Adam’s first-born son had to spend time in the neonatal intensive care unit when he was born, which is so hard for a new parent. Adam’s partner started attending Thrive at Five’s parent baby and toddler groups and managed to get to come along on one of his days off work. At the first group Adam was very nervous, especially as the only dad in the room, but soon felt at ease thanks to our Thrive at Five Parent Connectors.
Now, Adam regularly brings his son to the groups on his own, promotes the groups to other families to encourage them to attend and acts as a mentor to new attendees. He said attending the groups has helped his confidence, improved his mental health and has provided access to purposeful activities and high-quality resources for his son’s development. Adam’s confidence has grown so much that he volunteered to speak to over 70 practitioners at Thrive at Five’s ‘Parents Thriving in the Early Years’ event. He Shared his experiences, challenges and explained how parents would like to engage with professionals.
Listening to Parents
It’s amazing to see this work to connect with parents and carers starting to pay off.
Our 2021 survey of parents in Stoke-on-Trent received 39 responses. Three years later, in 2024, by harnessing the reach of partners and building trust through our Parent Connectors to encourage participation, we received 511 responses. Over 200 of those parents have also signed up to share their views in the future. We have shown how relationships are strengthened and engagement increased by listening and acting on what we hear.
Isolation and Loneliness
Receiving Information
School Readiness
Easter play and read 2024
Part of our approach is to identify and involve organisations and services that aren’t currently engaged with early years support,...
Engaging with parents and carers during pregnancy
Through the conversations our Parent Connectors were having in Stoke-On-Trent, we quickly realised that there was a need for more...
On our journey we have walked alongside a passionate and dedicated early years workforce. These are people who care deeply about the work they do for children and their families.
Harnessing the power of data
Armed with the right data, the early years workforce can intervene early with the right support when problems are identified and assess the impact of interventions delivered to provide support. Senior leaders can use aggregated data to understand trends and measure systems change. Crucially, everyone in the system can better measure parent’s wellbeing, the strength of parent-infant relationships and children’s development.
Giving children the best start in life was a key priority and we knew we needed to do things differently. That’s why we were keen to work with Thrive at Five - to explore a different approach that could enable us to join up our system better and achieve more from the assets, strengths and collaboration within the community.”
- Kathryn Boulton, Former Corporate Director, Children and Family Services, Redcar & Cleveland Borough Council
“Before Thrive at Five, professionals didn’t talk to each other. Things weren’t advertised properly. Things were being missed all the time. Whereas now we are out there getting the parents and children supported.”
- Mandy Sherwin, Family Support Worker, Alpha Academies Trust
Working with health visitors
One way we’ve begun to improve the system is by supporting the local health foundation trust and health visitors to collect new data during their assessments of babies and toddlers to provide a more accurate and in-depth picture of parent and child needs. Well trialled questionnaires, recommended by early years experts, are shared with parents on a tablet and recorded by the health visiting team. The data is then uploaded to the central data system so it can be accessed and tracked by other health practitioners. The next step will be to support data sharing between services to enable easier referrals and sign-posting to additional support where necessary. We aim to help our partners build a system that is aligned and uses shared insights.
Thank you
Collaboration is everything to us at Thrive at Five
We’re in awe of the dedicated early years professionals and all those in our local communities working every day to make a direct difference for families.
We’re honoured to work alongside so many volunteers, parents and carers who give up their time, understanding, experience to improve outcomes in and for their community.
We’re inspired by the expert insights, research and knowledge that our professional and academic partners share to inform our work.
We want to say a huge thank you to you all. It takes a village to raise a child and we couldn’t do any of our work without you.
Our supporters
We’re incredibly grateful to the individuals and organisations who provide funding and resources to enable our work and empower our network. We want to say a huge thank you to all those who have supported our work, including the following in 2023/2024:
