Project overview
Achieve Your Potential
We are working with a partnership of specialist organisations to deliver this small pilot project which is unique to Lancashire and has been funded by The Armed Forces Covenant Fund Trust’s Service Pupil Support Programme, part of the Ministry of Defence’s Armed Forces Families Fund.
Achieve Your Potential will champion the Armed Forces community, raising awareness of the impact that being part of a military family can have on a young person’s life and educational experiences. Working with four of our member colleges we will offer Service children a personalised package of support that has been developed with a specialist team to reflect their experiences and aspirations and help to tackle some of the challenges they have faced. The project aims to:
• Increase the extent to which the needs of Service children are recognised in Lancashire’s colleges.
• Test the impact of providing personalised and targeted support on the retention, attainment and progression of Service children aged 16-18 who are attending Lancashire’s colleges.
• Champion the armed forces community, raising awareness among the Further Education sector in Lancashire, and more widely, of what life and learning is like growing-up in a military family and how Service children can be best supported.
• Increase the number of Colleges that have signed the Armed Forces Covenant and have a plan in place to ensure that commitments made are implemented and maintained with regards to supporting Service children.
We are working with four colleges initially – Blackpool and the Fylde College, Burnley College, Nelson and Colne College Group and West Lancashire College. However, we hope the project will contribute to a wider evidence base around the needs of Service children and inform future policy and practice across Lancashire’s colleges and the FE sector as a whole.
Our partners in this project are The College for Military Veterans and Emergency Services (at the University of Central Lancashire), Careers Ideas Limited and The Armed Forces Community HQ.
Rosie Fearn, Director of The Lancashire Colleges group said “We are thrilled to have been awarded this funding which will enable us to offer new and exciting opportunities to Service children studying at our colleges. The Trust’s vision is for a thriving Armed Forces community that is valued and supported within our society. Lancashire is home to one of the largest communities in the country and we recognise the importance of ensuring that Service children have the same opportunities and support to succeed as every other young person.”
Becky Steel, Director of the College for Military Veterans and Emergency Services, said: “This project provides us with an excellent opportunity to provide in-depth support to Service children and young people throughout Lancashire’s Further Education sector. Whilst the education pathway for Service children is tracked in primary, secondary and Higher Education little is known about what happens to Service children during Further Education. As part of our commitment to the Armed Forces Covenant, we are raising the importance of the statutory duty all education providers have to ensure the learning and development needs of the armed forces community are understood so that they are not disadvantaged in any way.”
Improving Veteran pathways to Education
This project is being funded via The Thrive Together Programme through the Forces Wellbeing Collective, a network of professionals, volunteers and cross-sector organisations, joining forces to improve the wellbeing of the Armed Forces community in the North West.
We are working with The College for Military Veterans and Emergency Services (at the University of Central Lancashire) to increase the engagement of Veterans, their families and carers in Further Education (FE) both as students and as employees in Lancashire and the wider North West. We aim to:
• Train and educate practitioners in FE on the experience and related additional support needs of Veterans, their families and carers as students.
• Encourage and support college HR teams to ensure that Veterans, their families and carers are identified and not disadvantaged as part of employee recruitment processes and are offered targeted wellbeing and other support as employees.
• Develop a network of Armed Forces Champions in FE throughout the North West, linking these into local Armed Forces Covenant Hubs and developing a peer-mentoring and coaching model for Veterans, delivered by Veterans who are employed within or have benefitted from FE as part of their own transition.
• Increase the number of Colleges that have signed the Armed Forces Covenant and have a plan in place to ensure that commitments made are implemented and maintained with regards to supporting Veterans, their families and carers.
Rosie Fearn, Director of The Lancashire Colleges group said “We are delighted to be working with the College for Military Veterans and Emergency Services at UCLan to be delivering this project. The Thrive Together Programme has been recognised for its success in bringing together a community of organisations to provide better support to veterans in need and we are glad to now be part of that community. Lancashire is home to a large number of Veterans and we recognise the important role that Further Education can play in their transition”.