We help schools build cradle-to-career support so that

Every child can enjoy a life of choice and opportunity.

Great schools are necessary but not sufficient. Children need support that's coherent, consistent and connected, at every stage.

Look at your own place Watch the films

Schools are already at the heart of their neighbourhoods

Almost every family walks through a school gate. Schools are trusted, they know children for years, and they notice early when something isn't right. That makes them the natural place to start joining up everything else a child needs: the nursery, the health visitor, the youth club, the first employer.

When it's joined up, support around a child is:

  • Coherent

    Each stage of learning builds on the last, from the early years to adulthood.

  • Connected

    Health, care, education and community services work around the same child.

  • Consistent

    Trusted adults stay close through every transition, not just within one institution.

Four ways we help

Each strand of our work supports schools and their partners to build cradle-to-career support in their neighbourhoods.

It started in Feltham

We began in Feltham, in west London, more than a decade ago, with a school asking what else its children needed to thrive. Now schools and their partners are doing this work in neighbourhoods and places across the country, from single communities to whole regions.

Since 2012, one question: what does a child need to thrive?

Read our story

101

neighbourhoods and places working with us across the UK

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Changing the odds

Three places where schools stopped working alone

We've been filming in Chard, Middlesbrough and Bligh: the heads, families, employers and community partners who decided their neighbourhood could be organised better around its children.

Watch the films
ChardSomerset · 6-minute film
It all started by being brave enough to get people in a room.

A school's breakfast invitation became shared work with the community hub, from free books for babies to volunteering for sixth formers.
Middlesbrough7-minute film
You could build your future here.

Local employers chose to work with the young people most likely to leave without a next step, and built a post-16 course with the school.
BlighMedway · 7-minute film
I don't think I'd have survived the last year without those baby groups.

Here the school's relationship with a family starts long before Reception, alongside health and council services.

Now look at your own place

Cradle to career in your place is a short, free tool for school and local authority leaders. What you write stays on your device, and you can save it as a PDF.

Try the tool

Rather talk it through? Book a call with Leonie Ratty, who leads our Cradle-to-Career Catalyst programme.

  1. A picture of what is happening to children in your place, from birth to first job
  2. How a cradle-to-career approach works, phase by phase
  3. Eight prompts to help you decide where you would start

Find your way in

However you come to this work, there's a place to start.

Build support in your neighbourhood

For school, trust and local authority leaders ready to join up support around children in their place.

Join a leadership programme

For aspiring headteachers and trust leaders who want to lead across institutions, not only within them.

Fund or partner with us

For funders and organisations who want to help make cradle-to-career support the norm, not the exception.

Join our team

See current roles at the Foundation and across our programmes.