Enhancing Life Chances by Bringing Communities Together in Handsworth

We exist to enhance the life chances of children, young people and families by bringing together diverse communities in Handsworth and across Birmingham.

We manage a broad range of community and educational project working alongside our school association members and community partners to improve the lives of families. We focus on enhancing the life chances of children in our city, on family health and wellbeing and on social integration. We do this through our strategic priorities:

We have enabled a huge variety of projects since our inception in 1999, including our flagship Young People’s Parliament, our schools learning networks and more recently organising our community’s response to Covid-19 pandemic: creating a food distribution hub from our conference centre.

Our mission is to promote youth inclusion and family wellbeing advancement through the delivery of enjoyable, creative, and effective projects and services. Headteachers from member schools work alongside local residents, project participants, partner organisations and volunteers to achieve this together. We work predominantly with BAME families experiencing high levels of poverty, low incomes and high unemployment in areas with high crime rates and poor rates of health. Families have reduced access to support due to multiple complex issues. Many families do not have English as a first language and this compounds their difficulty in accessing support services. You can check out the short biographies of our Board and our staff.

Our vision is the development of a strong community of schools, providing excellent care, support opportunities and outcomes for every child

• To create positive learning environments that recognise and challenge racism, sexism, poverty, and social deprivation.
• Pupils are valued for who they are, as much as for what they achieve and all achievements are celebrated.
• The Association will work closely with schools, their governors, staff, parents and the local community to develop together the successful citizens of the future.
• We aspire for all our pupils to become valued citizens equipped with a vocation to serve their local community and global society.
• A seamless learning journey from 3 to 18 years - excellence in primary practice can be transferred to secondary and vice versa.
• We inform parents and carers with knowledge, resources and signposting to enable families to work together to achieve better life chances and future prospects.
• We support families to maintain their health and wellbeing so that children and young people are supported to thrive.
• We work to build community partnerships to add value to educational offers and increase our capacity to help the healthy development of children and young people
• Develop collaboration to stimulate innovative research based approaches, share best practice and co-ordinate focussed CPD Quality assurance.
• High level accountability and review of standards in schools to identify and share areas of strength and target support to specific schools.
• Enhanced opportunities for shared projects, events, activities.
• Opportunities for professional development and growth of staff – sustainable leadership
• To develop imaginative, sustainable multi-agency activities that widen participation and embrace other community members of all ages and heritages.