West London Zone was designed by families, charities, local government and schools, who came together because of a shared experience. Everyone knew someone – friends, siblings, sons, daughters – who might have taken a different path with the right opportunities.

West London Zone was inspired by the world’s first ‘children’s zone’ – the ground-breaking Harlem Children’s Zone (HCZ), later rolled out across 20 US states as President Obama’s ‘Promise Neighbourhoods’ programme. Our founder Danny Kruger visited Harlem Children’s Zone in 2011.

Danny wanted to take HCZ’s core principles - working with a group of children from ‘cradle-to- career’, in a place-based way – to change the lives of children in west London. He and our chief executive Louisa Mitchell led a community consultation to agree how to do this.

They interviewed local families with children of all ages, ex-offenders, and groups of secondary school students. They then brought together over 40 people from local government, the voluntary sector, education, community groups, and funders, to work together over about 6 months to design our model.

In 2015 we delivered and evaluated a 1-year pilot in 3 educational settings – early years, primary and secondary.

West London Zone was formally launched in September 2016 in partnership with 132 children and families, 3 schools and 12 charities. Today we have worked with over 900 children, and partner with over 21 schools and 35 charities.

 

The West London Zone Outcomes Framework

Our outcomes framework guides everything we do. It shows where we want every WLZ child to get to, so we know they are on track to flourish as adults.

We track progress against 4 areas – emotional & mental wellbeing, relationships, confidence & aspiration, and progress at school. By addressing needs and strengths against each of these we know we are helping each child reach their goals.

We collect data from our Link Worker’s interactions with children, schools, and our delivery partners. Collecting and measuring the right data means we know our programme is working for each child, and their Link Worker can quickly follow up if they are not engaging fully with their support. It also means we can measure how well our programme is working overall.

You can read more about our outcomes and how we measure impact in our Collective Impact in Practice report.