The Child, Youth, Family and Community Network

The Child, Youth, Family and Community Network connects interested people to enable more good things to happen for children, youth, families and communities. It is a down to earth, practical, supportive environment with a social justice focus.

This network is for you if you are interested in sharing expertise, knowledge, resources, tools and research across one or more of the following sectors:

• Early years
• Childhood
• Youth / adolescence
• Families
• Communities

What we do

The child, youth, family and community network connects people virtually and face to face in order to enable us to all do our work better. We believe that theory and practice need to come together and inform one another, we believe that there is not enough time for us all to create and innovate, and we believe that everyone is an expert at something.

If you are interested in best practice with children, youth, families and communities then come along to one of our events, share your news with us and get involved. This is the right place for you if you are: an interested person, a parent or carer, a practitioner, manager, leader, academic, student, researcher, commissioner or anything else at all.

We post interesting updates and news on the website, we run seminar series, networking events, conferences, offer CPD and so much more. Let us know what news you would like us to share more widely.

Current projects

• The Marginalisation and Co-created Education Project (Erasmus+ funded) researching why school fails so many young people in the UK, Norway and Denmark.
• The Young Researchers Network – supporting and developing groups of young researchers across Cumbria and Lancashire so far (e.g. Headstart Blackpool and Young Cumbria).
• Youth Arts Research Event – emergent plans in place to run a day exploring arts based work with young people in partnership with Cath Larkin and the Centre of Participation at UCLAN.
• ‘Youth-full’ – developing a resource for youth and community workers across the UK and Australia.
• The Impact of Poor Housing on Child Outcomes – free research and keynote for the Cumbria Child Poverty Action Group.
• Lancaster City of Sanctuary – supporting practitioners across Lancaster to consider how to best support migrants, asylum seekers and refugees.
• Asset-balanced practice – encouraging practitioners to apply an asset-balance to existing needs-led and risk-averse ways of working.
• The wellbeing and social justice project – enabling practitioners, leaders, commissioners and researchers to work use an empowerment framework when planning and evaluating wellbeing work with Lucy Maynard from the Brathay Trust.

Current organisational links

• Brathay Trust – strategic partner.
• Centre for Youth Impact – key link and partner organisation supporting impact and evaluation work.
• Centre for Participation, UCLAN – developing partnership
• Foyer Federation – strategic partner.
• Edith Cowan University – strategic partner.
• Queensland University of Technology – visiting academic partner
• Queensland University – visiting academic partner
• Guelph Humber University – strategic partner and full student and staff exchange programme
• University of South-Eastern Norway – research partner
• VIA University Denmark – research partner
• Cumbria Youth Alliance – close working partner
• Barnardos – close working partner
• Young Cumbria – close working partner
• Headstart Blackpool - close working partner
• Lancaster Community Voluntary Services - close working partner
• The Association for Young People’s Health -  close working partner