Manchester schools: apply now! - Parental Engagement Network

We are looking for 10 schools to help us develop an exciting new national pilot project based in Manchester and funded by Sport England. The project will start in September and is one of just 22 projects across the country that has won funding.

Do you want to:

Improve the health and wellbeing of families at your school?
Improve children’s fitness levels and their readiness to learn?
Develop the skills of parent volunteers to support other families and the school?
Increase parental engagement and support the school’s community cohesion?
Develop a longer term sustainable model to enable families to get more active together?
Enable families to develop positive networks and reduce isolation?

If so, apply to get involved in our new funded Active Families Project!

What does the project involve?

We plan to train a member of staff and three parent volunteers from each school as Family Activity Champions and enable them to facilitate groups of families to commit to becoming more active together. This would include:

After-school activities. This is block of six sessions of fun activities for families held directly after school one night of the week on school premises (A member of school staff would need to be present) Ten different families would do a block of sessions each term which would include a range of accessible activities such as games, skipping, treasure hunts and dance (a total of 30 families over the year).
Home activities. From these sessions families would also be given activities or challenges to do together at home to try and increase their regular daily activity levels. If they attend the six sessions and complete the home activities they get a bronze award.
Community Activities. As part of a silver award families would then be encouraged to access other opportunities and facilities in the community in the evenings and weekends (e.g. swimming, cycling, badminton, activities in parks etc.)
Families who could show that they had sustained increased activity over several terms would then get a gold award.

This is a two year project. During the second year we would offer continued support to help schools to embed the project and deliver successful elements of the project to a further 30 families (including enabling training and support of further Champions as required).

There will be an option for Champions to get accreditation (e.g. level 2 City and Guilds Award in facilitating groups or working with parents) for their work.

This project is to be aimed primarily at families from low socio-economic groups (parents whose highest qualification is GCSE, low paid workers or those on benefits).

If these families are a minority at your school, we may still able to work with you but we would have to ensure that mainly the target families would access the project.

We would need the pilot schools to agree to:

Allocate one or two members of staff to be involved with the project including helping to facilitate the after school sessions at the school, supporting the Family Activity Champions and encouraging families to do the home and community activities.
Recruit appropriate parents to be Champions and identify and encourage targeted families to attend the sessions.
Provide a hall or gym suitable for 30 adults and children to do family activities immediately after school one day a week for 18 weeks of the year.
Allocate a member of SLT to have an overview of the project and support its development including enabling recruitment, publicity, monitoring, evaluation and celebration of successful families.
Staff attending the briefings, training and review sessions.
In the second year pay a small contribution towards resources ( max £300) out of the school’s Sports Premium funding
Lend some equipment e.g. balls, beanbags and bibs.

In return, PEN will provide

Six days of comprehensive training for the parent volunteers (Family Activity Champions).
Briefing for a senior leader and training for the staff supporting the project.
Ongoing support and visits to the school
All the resources needed to help recruit families and run the sessions, including publicity, Active Family Bags, activity cards and resources to support the activities, family record cards, resources needed for the after-school activities, certificates and incentives etc.
Funding to support families to access activities.
Opportunities to recognise, celebrate and publicise nationally the successful outcomes at your school

Interested?
If you want to find out more please come to a special briefing session to be held on Thursday 5th July at the Windrush Centre M16 7WD. There will be two sessions.

2.00 – 3.00 OR
3.30 – 4.30

Please email helen@penetwork.co.uk to book a place at a briefing.

Alternatively you can just fill in and return the application form by Friday 13th July to helen@penetwork.co.uk.

We will let you know by Thursday 19th July if you have a place on the project.