What we do

We help children and young people build the relationships and skills they need to get on track socially, emotionally and academically to thrive in adulthood.

We do this by building trusted relationships, providing specialist support and joining up each child’s support system, including families, schools and local organisations, to deliver a personalised 2-year support plan for each child.

Collective Impact

We harness the collective power of the West London community, joining up the right support and opportunities for children at the right time. 

We partner with schools and charities working locally, sharing our knowledge and insight, bringing together the whole community -  government, charities, schools, families and funders - to work together to support each child.

By doing this, we ensure everyone in the community is working towards a common end goal. As part of a vibrant community, we bring together the best of what is already available locally as well as finding and funding other charities to deliver programmes locally to West London Zone children and young people.

Personalised support

The WLZ programme is a 2-year support plan tailored to each child's unique strengths, needs and aspirations.

Link Workers

We have a team of trusted adults - Link Workers - who are based in the child’s school and see them every day. They guide, support and champion each child and are responsible for designing and facilitating each child’s 2-year programme with them, their families and their teachers.

Our Link Workers:

• Encourage each child to set goals;
• Provide support in one-to-one meetings to help reach these goals;
• Bring in our delivery partners to provide specialist support for each child and deliver support themselves.

Specialist Support

We work with over 40 specialist delivery partners working locally to provide specialist support, working closely with schools to assess where extra provision is needed and commission partners to address these gaps. 

Link Workers also ‘link’ children to existing opportunities in the community which they might not otherwise be aware of. These are always local and free/low cost, making them accessible and something families can use after their child finishes WLZ.

We listen and have conversations with each child, their family and their school, and we don’t start to design their programme until we really understand them and are confident each child understands and wants our support to help them achieve their goals.

• 92% of children tell us that they feel they can ask their Link Worker for support when needed.
• 83% of parents see an increase in their child’s confidence during the programme.
• Young people who completed our programme in 2020 received a total of 10,520 hours of Link Worker or Partner support, an average of 51 hours per student.

Data and evidence led

We use data to identify the children who would benefit the most from our support, and provide detailed insight into each child’s needs and progress over the two years so we can flex their plan. 

We work with schools to identify children, then we combine our data with the knowledge each Link Worker acquires through their trusted relationship to develop a deep understanding of how we can best support each child throughout the two years.

Each child’s plan is dynamic and regularly adjusted as they progress, with input from teachers and parents.