Hull Local Authority has eight main Family Hubs and four satellite hubs, delivered by a mixture of community sector groups and the Local Authority. Each Hub is unique, serving the needs of the children and families in its community. The Hubs offer a welcoming place where families can access the full range of Start for Life services. This includes sessions with early years practitioners, as well as access to midwives, health visitors, family support workers, social workers and volunteers, who are committed to working together to ensure that all children have the opportunity to thrive.
Helen Tan is the Early Years Standards Improvement Officer for Hull LA, who implemented the use of Tapestry across the Hubs to support good practice.
‘Tapestry just keeps everything in one central place for us,’ Helen said.
Demonstrating impact and children’s progress
The driving force behind introducing Tapestry was to enable the Family Hub leaders in the Local Authority and the teams in the communities to measure the impact of the work they were doing with children and families. The Family Hub practitioners focus on a holistic approach, looking at the whole child. Professional judgement is valued, and leaders and teams take part in ‘deep sampling’ of individual children’s learning journeys.
Helen added: ‘We’re looking for the qualitative information about the progress a child has made. A learning journey on Tapestry tells a story of what attending sessions at a Hub has meant for a particular child and their family.’
A strategic overview for monitoring and reviews
As a leader supporting a group of Hubs, it’s important for Helen to have an overview of all the Family Hubs across Hull. She needs to be able to access information wherever she is, whether that’s to quickly show other members of the LA leadership team any specific areas of impact, share what different Hubs are currently focussed on, or to engage with practitioners’ reviews.
‘From my point of view Tapestry makes things so much easier,’ said Helen
‘Wherever I am, I can log in to Tapestry. I don’t need to go and look through lots of paper journals, I can quickly and easily look up a case study to refer to for monitoring purposes. This helps me with performance management as well, which we do for each of the Family Hubs. And Tapestry is there to support the practitioners as they talk about a child, helping them remember their learning and development story.’
Supporting the home learning environment
A key focus across all the Hull Family Hubs is to support the home learning environment. Helen and her team look for different ways to engage parents in their child’s learning. They involve parents, showing them how an activity they take part in during a session can support a particular area of development, as well as things they can do at home with their child, and why. Hub teams use Tapestry Observation to connect parents and carers with their children’s learning and to help them understand how important their own input is.
‘We wanted to enable parents to be more aware of how an activity could support their child’s learning, particularly around Communication and Language, or number,' explained Helen
‘With Tapestry, practitioners can share a photo or video of an activity and how it supports their child’s development. This helps parents to know why it is important and how it fits together. Tapestry also helps us share a child’s experiences with family members who aren’t at the Hub sessions.’
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