Lambeth Early Action Partnership (LEAP) was born in 2015. We're made up of parents, early years practitioners, nurseries, children’s centres, the National Children’s Bureau, Lambeth Council, NHS trusts, community organisations and several local charities.
Our mission is to:
We will demonstrate how to improve children’s life chances through investing in early years provision and connecting local services together under one partnership.
The earliest years of a child’s life are an especially vital time, when brains develop rapidly and foundations are laid for the future. To capitalise on this, and to learn about which types of early years services are most effective, LEAP works exclusively with pregnant women and children aged 0-3 years and their families.
LEAP delivers services in parts of Lambeth. Where we work was selected based on local need, drawing on a range of local evidence that illustrated greater inequalities for young children in the LEAP area compared with the rest of Lambeth. Broadly, our target area stretches from Stockwell to Myatt’s Field, down through North Brixton to the top of Tulse Hill. By focusing on this defined area and population, we can deliver a wide range of early years supports and test what difference it is possible to make with this level of activity.
You can find out if you are eligible for LEAP services on our postcode checker. If you are not, we can refer you on to wider services.
In our target area, LEAP fund, continuously improve, and evaluate over 20 services. These fall into two groups:
LEAP is a ‘collective impact initiative’, which means that all our services and activities link together and work towards shared goals around improving children’s outcomes.
Also, LEAP shares learning and evidence beyond our target area with early years experts and policymakers. This is so our learnings and findings can be incorporated into their work, to make an impact beyond Lambeth.
LEAP services support families at every step through pregnancy and the early stages of a child’s life.
Given that many different aspects of children’s development are related, we work across three strands encompassing children’s:
These strands are important because services focused on just one of these strands could be undermined by challenges from one of the other strands (for instance, a child’s poor emotional well-being could impact on their language and communication). Working simultaneously across all three strands gives us a greater chance of making a positive and lasting impact on children and families.
Each LEAP service fits within one of these three strands. However, they also contribute to broader goals that cut across the strands.
For example:
The conditions in which people are born, grow up and live are not the same for everyone.
We know that some children in Lambeth experience different outcomes because of unequal social conditions - and that this isn’t fair.
LEAP is committed to ensuring that Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) run through every element of the programme. Learn how we are determined to make a difference through our values and accountabilities. Read our EDI report.
LEAP received £38 million from the National Lottery Community Fund as part of the national A Better Start programme. Under the agreement, the National Children’s Bureau became the accountable body for this funding and the host for the LEAP Partnership.
LEAP is governed through a Partnership Board comprised of parents, senior members of the LEAP core team, and representatives from local agencies and organisations.
The Partnership Board is jointly chaired by the Chief Executive of the National Children’s Bureau, Anna Feuchtwang, and Lambeth Council’s Strategic Director of Children’s Services, Merlin Joseph.
Each board meeting starts with a report from the LEAP Director Laura McFarlane and LEAP’s Parent Representatives who represent the community.
Overall, LEAP’s evaluation is focused on understanding our impact and understanding how, why, for whom, and under what circumstances this impact has taken place.
The aims of the evaluation are:
Often at LEAP services and events you may be asked to provide information or complete a survey. This is vital to help us get a better view of the needs of the area and the effects of our work.
The pandemic has shown how important it is to have a dynamic framework that can flex to respond to external changes. This report gives us the necessary framework.
Section 1 presents the latest working version of LEAP’s Programme Theory of Change. Section 2 outlines LEAP’s roadmap to the end of the programme. This details how we will put our plan into practice.
Download:
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