Following the conclusion of Gloucestershire County Council’s formal procurement process, we are thrilled to announce that Gloucestershire Gateway Trust has been awarded the contract to deliver the Children and Family Centre service provision in Gloucester and the Forest of Dean on behalf of Gloucestershire County Council.
GGT is continually working towards creating sustainably stronger, more resilient and welcoming communities. Our aim is to support, encourage and strengthen neighbourhoods, by raising people’s aspirations and better connecting them with their local area, to ensure everyone is valued and has the opportunity to influence decisions that impact their lives whilst creating lasting solutions to local challenges.
All of our resident led community research over the last 10 years has informed us that communities are most concerned about the provision and opportunities for families, children and young people. This is why we have already invested over £2 million of our own earnt income from our Gloucester Services project into community-based services which support these groups locally and why we decided to build a new community partnership led by GGT to take on this contract.
Our community led bid which incorporates a powerful consortium of local schools, statutory and specialist partners and VCFSE organisations in every area where the centres operate, will together focus on a ‘whole neighbourhood approach’ to ensure the most sustainable, innovative, inclusive and agile service is provided to children and families across these two districts.
During the tendering process, we developed a strong partnership with Aspire Foundation; a registered charity founded to support children and families to ‘aspire and achieve’; who we are delighted to announce will have oversight of the delivery of the Targeted Family Support element of this contract; further enabling us to offer a high quality and thriving service.
Aspire Foundation have over 20 years’ experience of delivering successful, high quality early intervention services to families and are the current provider of the Children and Family Centre contract in Cheltenham and Tewkesbury. Therefore, we felt this collective approach is mutually beneficial to strengthen each other’s organisations core aims and further enhance our local ownership approach.
Our ambition is to ensure all families have access to the right support at the right time in the right place. With Aspire Foundation delivering targeted support and drawing on the experience and expertise of the dynamic Gloucestershire Gateway Partnership to drive open access universal service provision, we truly believe our model will help build stronger communities and create a local lasting legacy.
We are extremely eager and passionate to support children and families in Gloucester and the Forest of Dean and our new model of delivery will be commencing from 1st April 2025.
We have also recently led a similar community consortium of Young Peoples organisations to successfully bid for the delivery of open access Youth Services in Gloucester and the Forest of Dean, which will shortly begin on 1st October 2024.
This is an exceptionally positive transition towards the Family Hubs model in Gloucestershire, creating exciting future opportunities and prospects for our children, young people and neighbourhoods.