Communities For Children
Learning and support partnership
Dartington Service Design Lab, in partnership with Place Matters, are the Learning and Support Partners for Communities for Children - an ambitious new place-based programme working to address the impact of child poverty in areas of high need across the UK.
Communities for Children, led by BBC Children in Need, will invest in ten local partnerships working to tackle the systemic and structural drivers of disadvantage for children and young people. As Learning and Support Partners, together Dartington Service Design Lab and Place Matters will support these local partnerships to create the conditions and equitable social infrastructures that enable all children and young people to thrive.
Why this matters
The crisis of child poverty is deepening across the UK and addressing it requires work that shifts power, strengthens local partnerships, and transforms the policies, relationships, resource flows and mindsets that shape children’s lives.
Communities for Children is responding to this need by being:
· Bold, systemic and emergent in approach
· Enabling of collective action
· Learning and evidence-led
· Equitable and focused on shifting-power
· Locally contextualised
Our role as learning partners
Through tailored, site-level support and cross-site convening, we will surface and share learning at site- and progamme-wide levels to inform ongoing adaption, as well as influence and inform wider funding, policy and practice.
We will:
· Strengthen systems leadership for place-based change
· Build a cohesive learning community across Communities for Children lead organisations
· Support local partnerships to deliver and adapt
· Connect Communities for Children to the broader ecosystem at local, regional and national levels
Together, Dartington Service Design Lab and Place Matters will engage in this work in a child and community-centred way – valuing collaboration, curiosity and openness, and keeping our approaches to trauma-informed and anti-racist practice at the centre of everything we do.
Our ambition
This work sits at the heart of Dartington’s mission to use the power of evidence, experience and design to tackle complex challenges with and for children and young people. Through our work on Communities for Children we are:
· Supporting local partnerships to shift the root drivers of child poverty
· Generating actionable learning about what it takes to shift systems in place
· Strengthening leadership and community power
· Building the evidence base for sustainable, equitable change
“Child poverty is not accidental, it’s the result of structures and decisions that can be changed and systems that can be shifted. Changing those systems requires a sustained commitment to shifting power towards communities and those closest to the challenge, grounded in rigorous learning and evidence at every step. This work sits at the heart of Dartington’s mission to tackle complex challenges with and for children and young people, and to build better futures where all young people can thrive. We are proud to bring our expertise in systems change, research and co-design to Communities for Children and to work in close partnership with Place Matters on generating actionable learning about what it takes to shift the root drivers of child poverty.”
Our team
Tim Hobbs (Dartington) and Emily Sun (Place Matters) - Learning and Support Partner Strategic Leads
Ediane Santana de Lima (Dartington) - Programme Level Support Lead
Jo Blundell (Place Matters) - Programme-level Learning Lead
Katie Potter (Dartington) and Steff O’Keefe (Place Matters) - Site-level Support and Learning Leads
