What happens when schools act as community anchors and communities shape local services?
22nd April 2026
Learning from the Old Kent Road Family Zone
From ‘done to’ to ‘doing with’
For many years, the residents of the Old Kent Road area had felt ‘done to’ – handed services they didn’t ask for and excluded from decisions that affected their lives. The Old Kent Road Family Zone (OKRFZ), initiated in 2020 in Surrey Square Primary School, emerged from the belief that many solutions to health and wellbeing challenges experienced by the community are already held within the community itself. Emphasising community connections, the Family Zone seeks to create the conditions for children, young people and families in the area to thrive, working with the community to collaborate and unlock existing capacity.
In late 2023, the OKRFZ and Impact on Urban Health commissioned Dartington to undertake a developmental evaluation to support the OKRFZ to refine its Theory of Change, understand what enables its impact and generate evidence to guide future investment and replication.
Community-led impact
The OKRFZ is built on four interconnected foundations: a community-led vision, community listening and support, community-led decision-making, and ongoing learning, leadership and influence. Together, these produce both immediate, practical benefits and longer-term, systemic shifts.
For families and community members, the impact is tangible. The school acts as a trusted local hub, reducing financial pressures, providing childcare support and helping children build confidence and social skills. Families gain easier access to services and early support, so needs are addressed sooner. Culturally relevant events strengthen social connections and the community-led nature of the Zone gives residents a genuine sense of pride and agency in their neighbourhood.
“It has made my family stress free as I am here in Youth Club…My family aren’t worried about where I am.”
For staff and volunteers, the benefits also run deep. Taking part builds skills and confidence, opens pathways to employment and supports people into leadership roles, amplifying their strengths and embodying the Zone’s core purpose of unlocking community capacity.
“The increase in my income has provided further opportunities within my family life. I am able to treat and buy things for my family.”
In the wider system, the effects are also being felt. Leadership training is helping school leaders see themselves as anchor organisations and strong relationships with funders and decision-makers are enabling more coordinated early intervention and more flexible, sustained funding.
“The idea of it existing [is what makes the difference], having an organisation to help the community.”
What makes this possible?
The evaluation identified five conditions that were important in supporting the effective design and delivery of the OKRFZ:
Governance and shared power: a diverse, committed Community Board ensures legitimacy, yet requires clarity on members’ role and authority, supported by transparent processes for genuine community involvement in decisions, including funding.
Partnership dynamics: collaborative relationships with complementary local organisations are essential; school leaders play a key role in connecting, motivating others and providing a sustainable basis for a community-led approach.
Adequate and flexible resourcing: sufficient time, funding and community capacity are required. Overly prescriptive funding or commissioning requirements risk undermining the emergent, adaptive, trust-based approach at the heart of the model.
Leadership quality and support: leaders and coordinators require the skills, relationships and contextual knowledge to navigate complexity, manage power dynamics and adapt across different stages of development.
An enabling policy environment: supportive national and local policies, and active alignment to these, creates a context for buy-in and legitimacy.
Building lasting change with communities
The Old Kent Road Family Zone is not delivering services to a community, it is building the relationships, power and capacity within one. It’s supporting families with immediate needs in ways that foster hope and agency, enabling early intervention and prevention in health and mental health, and moving towards the kind of systems change that lasts.
This approach aligns directly with national priorities around Family Hubs, Best Start in Life and Neighbourhood Health. But its potential will remain limited if funders and commissioners continue to favour short-term, output-focused contracting over the relational and community infrastructure that makes real change possible.
The OKRFZ offers both a compelling proof of concept and a rich source of learning for anyone seeking to design and fund the future of place-based family support. It demonstrates what is possible when schools act as community anchors and communities are given genuine power to shape local services and supports. For this potential to be realised more widely, funders, commissioners and policymakers will need to make deliberate choices about how they invest and what they measure.
Read our full evaluation report here to learn more about what policy-makers, funders and commissioners can do next.