Project: Parent Champions Plus
Funding: £536,411 from the Department for Education for a pilot from April 2013 to March 2014
Background: The Parent Champions programme, which involves parent volunteers spreading information to other parents about early years education and other services, dates back to 2007 and is now active in 23 local authority areas.
In 2012, the majority of projects were run by local authority family information services, many of which went on to see outreach funding cut. Meanwhile, an evaluation by Coram showed some of the schemes had not anticipated the level of support volunteers would need at first.
The Family and Childcare Trust, which devised the programme, was keen to find a model of delivery that supported outreach work and volunteers. The charity was struck by the success of one of their pathfinder projects, based in a children's centre in Liverpool. "Children's centres are used to managing volunteers so have more of an awareness of the induction and support parent champions need," says Helen Clark, director of fundraising and service delivery.
Action: The charity teamed up with Action for Children, a major voluntary sector provider of more than 200 children's centres. Six of these were chosen to trial a children's centre version of the Parent Champions project - one each in Kirklees and Sheffield and two in both Oldham and Oxfordshire.
Action for Children recruited a volunteer co-ordinator at each centre to work two and a half days a week. Between six and 10 parent volunteers were recruited for each centre and undertook two training sessions, led by the Family and Childcare Trust.
Thirty-six volunteers became "parent champions" from October. They spent five hours each week spreading the word to other parents in the community about the early years services, supported by weekly telephone catch-ups and monthly supervision meetings with their centre's volunteer co-ordinator.
Outcome: Since volunteers started work in October they have spoken to 2,146 parents at meetings and made one-to-one contact with 608 parents, resulting in 692 referrals. Of those referrals, 556 led to regular use of various services by parents. In total, 266 parents now regularly use children's centre services as a result of the project and 243 parents have taken up the offer of free early education for their two-year-old.
If you think your project is worthy of inclusion, email supporting data to derren.hayes@markallengroup.com
