Contents
1 Introduction & Background 3
2 Assets in Farnworth 6
2.1 List of mapped assets 7
2.2 Additional Assets 10
2.3 What families really value about local assets 11
2.4 Barriers to accessing assets 11
3 Voluntary sector organisation profiles 13
3.1 Bolton Toy Library 15
3.2 Fort Alice 17
3.3 Home-Start Bolton 20
1 Introduction & Background
A partnership of public sector agencies from across Greater Manchester, with support and representation from local voluntary and private sector leads, is developing a New Delivery Model and business case for Greater Manchester’s early years services.
This partnership are also, with The Children’s Society (TCS) as lead, developing a stage 2 bid and development plan for the Big Lottery Fund’s Fulfilling Lives: A Better Start programme. The purpose of the bid is to provide a Better Start in life for children from pre-birth to three years old with a particular focus on communication and language, social and emotional development and nutrition.
The rationale behind the Better Start programme has been heavily influenced by the work of the Dartington Social Research Unit, appointed by the Big Lottery Fund, to support the Stage 2 process in 15 shortlisted areas, including Greater Manchester. Dartington Social Research Unit’s work emphasises evidenced based interventions[1], preventative work, and the need for change to be community driven:
“Effective partnerships benefit significantly from the involvement of community representatives. This is not just a 'nice to have'. There is now robust evidence showing that the authentic involvement of the community increases the impact of services on child outcomes[2].”
The bid, if successful, would fund intensive delivery in five wards and inform learning across Greater Manchester.
In order to inform the bid and support wider knowledge development, TCS contracted Greater Manchester Centre for Voluntary Organisation (GMCVO), in partnership with our local members and networks, and with the support of partner agencies, to profile assets in the five bid wards.
The aim of this work, with the support of local public and voluntary sector partners, has been to identify and better understand what:
· parents and relevant community networks value in their community
· local additional assets and resources could support positive change for the benefit of parents and their children
· local additional assets and resources could support the Early Years New Delivery Model.
In doing this, this work aims to build on and complement the findings of the community engagement work carried out by The Innovation Unit, with support and coordination from GMCVO, and the Wellbeing Profile findings.
Looking ahead, and to put this work in context: How can communities play a bigger role in delivering ‘a better start’? How can we mobilise community driven change?
The Five Bid Wards
This work has focused on five wards that were chosen in line with The Big Lottery Fund’s criteria. These five wards are therefore the wards (one per Greater Manchester local authority in order to maximise local public, voluntary and private sector engagement and potential) that had the highest percentages of ‘child poverty’, ‘low birth weight births’, ‘obese children (Year 6)’ and the lowest percentage of ‘child development at age 5’.
This asset profiling exercise, therefore, has sought to build a picture of the strengths and resources that lie within the five ‘bid wards’:
Coldhurst (Oldham)
Farnworth (Bolton)
Langworthy (Salford)
Milkstone and Deeplish (Rochdale)
Moss Side (Manchester).
This report is about the ward of Farnworth in Bolton.
GMCVO’s approach to mapping assets
In order to gather as much useful information and local knowledge regarding assets, while working to tight bid timelines, a multi-layered approach was used. We felt that this would better bring out the different aspects of each place. Alongside insight gained through the engagement events held by The Innovation Unit and supported by GMCVO, there were five routes to identifying local assets.
Firstly, identification by parents and families of key local assets and resources for them and their children. This approach was central to our work and, to do this, we appointed Community Asset Investigators from each ward. Each investigator worked in one ward only (December 2013/January 2014) and was selected on the basis of their active involvement, via locally rooted community organisations, in the early years worlds of their respective ward. It was very important, in the selection criteria, that Community Asset Investigators were connected into local community networks. Investigators took a variety of approaches, including holding workshops with parents and families, and talking one-to-one with parents in their ward. The format of these conversations was open-ended but guided by the three areas, defined by A Better Start and identified by Dartington as critical to having a better start in life: language development, social and emotional development, and nutrition.
In Farnworth, the role of ‘Community Asset Investigator’ was carried out by Home-Start Bolton, a charity specialising in supporting families with children under 5 (see 3.3 for further details). Home-Start Bolton interviewed parents of children at six primary schools and three nurseries in Farnworth. This sought to obtain their views on which assets they valued in the local area and what they would like to see available for families in Farnworth.
Secondly, an online survey circulated to front line workers operating in each area. The survey was kept deliberately short and again was focused on identifying assets linked to the wellbeing of families with young children.
Thirdly, desk-based research was conducted to complement community-led identification of assets and resources.
Fourthly, we carried out interviews with voluntary, community, faith and social enterprise (Voluntary Sector / VCSE) organisations supporting families in each of the wards, some of whom are profiled here or in the ward-level reports. This provided more detail on the assets that families value in their area, including how:
· individual, local organisations currently contribute to a better start and
· the nature of their assets (e.g. their volunteer base, income streams, established links and relationships within a particular community).
Fifthly, we conducted an analysis of the scale of resources drawn down into the wards by Voluntary Sector groups. These findings were based on research carried out by the Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research which was published in a series of State of the Sector reports which included: Greater Manchester (Sheffield Hallam University: May 2013) and seven local authority areas in Greater Manchester. There were individual reports on four of the five bid ward authority areas (Bolton, Manchester, Oldham, and Salford).[3] The State of the Sector reports, besides drawing on the latest available sector data, incorporated survey responses from 1,403 VCSE groups from across Greater Manchester.
Through a strong emphasis on community-led identification of assets and resources, this multi-layered approach has sought to find out about the buildings, spaces, services, existing and potential voluntary sector activity, and any other potential assets like informal support networks or key individuals in each of the five wards that currently contribute to a better start in life.
2 Assets in Farnworth
This asset profiling exercise has sought to build a picture of the strengths and resources that lie within the Farnworth community, and identify gaps where new approaches may be needed to enhance the ability of the community to build on its strengths.
We know from statistical data that, in Farnworth, 37% of children live in poverty and the numbers of young mothers (aged 15-17) are well above national averages. The percentage of children eligible to receive free childcare at 2 is over double the national average. Referrals to Children’s Social Care are well above national average as are rates of smoking during pregnancy. It is well below national averages on all measures of school readiness.
Farnworth has a significant number of identified problems. The focus of this work, however, is to identify what does work, for parents of young children, and what stops those things from working better.
What you will see here is not an exhaustive analysis of the ward’s assets but a ‘snapshot’ at this given time, with potential for further investigation to build a more detailed picture.
Farnworth, Bolton - link to online, interactive map here.
NB – This map is a work in progress and serves an illustrative purpose – please report any inaccuracies to GMCVO
The map above is illustrative of the physical assets that have been identified. They range from the obvious, such as Children’s Centres, to the more obscure like galleries and social venues. Whilst physical assets are important, it must be remembered that they are only locations where activities take place, and there will be many other assets, alongside those identified here – such as small corner shops, cafés and childminding networks that will also be valued by, and valuable to, parents of young children.
The Farnworth area, south of Bolton town centre, is less densely populated and more spread out than other areas within the Better Start bid. Housing is predominately 1930’s to 1950’s low rise housing estates, intermingled with late Victorian terraces.
There are significant geological features such as the river and country park which isolates Farnworth from the centre of Bolton. There is a perceived lack of a defined shopping centre, a number of large retail parks and post industrial brownfield sites, and whilst there is more open space than other areas, much of this is generally not useful for safe outdoor play by young children.
Farnworth contains a wide variety of different land uses, focused on Farnworth town centre, which is the second largest town centre in the authority area next to Bolton’s. The town centre benefits from a pedestrianised shopping area around Brackley Street and new college development at Queen Street. There are industrial buildings at Express Industrial Estate, as well as former textile mills and other older industrial buildings, with a concentration of these around Lorne Street at Moses Gate. There is a concentration of older terraced housing around Farnworth town centre, with more modern housing to the west. Redevelopment of Farnworth’s town centre, including the addition of a new Health Centre, will happen in the coming years.
Royal Bolton Hospital is the biggest single employer in the area.
Farnworth is mainly built-up, but there are areas of open space, notably Farnworth Park.
The full list, to date, of identified local assets is below.
2.1 List of mapped assets
Children’s CentresHarvey Children's Centre
Kearsley Children's Centre
Lord St and Grosvenor Children's Centre
Alexandra Nursery School and Children's Centre
Little Lever Children and Young People's Centre
Orchards Children's Centre
Health facility
Farnworth Health Centre
Kearsley Medical Centre
Royal Bolton Hospital
Stonehill Medical Centre
Stonehill Pharmacy
Community
4th Farnworth Scout Group
Breaking Barriers
Choices Youth Support Group
Farnworth Parents' Group
Farnworth UCAN User Group
Farnworth Young Peoples Centre
Five Saints Team Mothers Union
Fortalice Ltd
Harmony Youth Project
Highfield Hall Community Centre
Home-Start Bolton
Moses Gate Community Action Team
Moses Gate UCAN
New Bury Drop In
Raise the Youth Foundation CIC Ltd
Bolton Lads and Girls Club
New Bury Community Centre
New Bury Community Learning Centre
New Bury UCAN centre
The Nightingale Centre
Faith Building
Farnworth United Reform Church
Our Lady of Lords & St Gregory's
St James Church of England School
St Michael's Church of England School
St Catherine's Church
St George's Church
St James Church
Sughra Mosque
St John The Evangelist C Of E Church
The Well Community centre and Baptist Church
Trinity Church
Outdoor play
Darley Park, Farnworth, United Kingdom
Farnworth Park
Leverhulme Park
Moses Gate Country Park
Moss Bank Park
Playground, corner of Beatrice and Moss Field Road
Indoor Play
Farnworth Leisure Centre
Harper Green Leisure Centre
Leverhulme Park Community Leisure Centre
Wobbly Bob's
Daycare
Abba Nursery
Bright Futures Childcare Ltd
Broad Oaks Nursery
Grosvenor Daycare Centre
Grosvenor Nursery School
High Meadow Nursery
Jolly Tots Nursery
Kids Kapers Day Nursery and Out of School Club
Lowndes Street Day Nursery
Tiny Tots Private Day Nursery
Schools and education
Al Jamiah Al Islamiyyah
All Saints CofE Schools and education
Bishop Bridgeman CofE Schools and education
Bolton Muslim Girls School
Canon Slade School
Cherry Tree Primary School
Essa Academy
Farnworth Library
Green Fold School
Harper Green School
Highfield Primary School
Little Lever Library
Little Lever School
Mount St Joseph Business and Enterprise College
Our Lady of Lourdes RC Primary School
Plodder Lane Primary School
Queensbridge Primary School
St Gregory's RC Primary School
St James CE Secondary School
St James CofE Primary School
St James's Church of England School
St Michael's Church of England School
St Peter's C.E. Primary School
The Ferns Primary Academy
Other
Asda
Bodywise Ladies Health Club
Bolton at Home - Support and Sustainment Team (South)
Bolton Community Homes
Bolton Toy Library
Couselling and Training Centre
Farnworth Social Circle Cricket Club
Farnworth Station
Farnworth Town Hall
Friends of Maxton House
Hoot: Bolton's Credit Union
Kidz2gether
Lever Park Learning Trust
Lidl
Manor Pharmacy
Market Pharmacy
Moses Gate station
St Vincent's Housing Association
Tesco Superstore
The Great Lever Voice
The Sycamore Project (Zac's Youth Bar)
The Travellers Unity Group
2.2 Additional Assets
Listed below are assets that have been identified and that are not plotted onto the map. This is because they either:
· have no single location
· are situated outside of the map area (but have been recognised as an asset valued by those living/working in the ward)
· are a person/people
Additional Assets· After school club at New Bury Community Centre
· Aid for Children with Tracheostomies
· Asian Parents Support Group
· Asian Women’s Wellbeing Group
· BAC PAC (Bolton Area Council for Parents and Carers)
· Barnardos – Bolton Service
· Bolton Breast Buddies
· Bolton Children’s Opportunity Group
· Bolton CVS website
· Bolton Special Needs Under 5’s Support
· Bookstart baby pack gifting via Health Visitors at the 8 month health check
· Community Learning Ambassadors
· Family Information Service
· Farnworth and Great Lever Neighbourhood Manager
· Farnworth Health Visitors
· Irritable Bowel Self Help Group
· JABS (provides information on vaccine and help on vaccine damage)
· Janet's baby group (at Farnworth Health Centre)
· Kidz2gether (Bolton based charity supporting children affected by autism and autistic spectrum disorders)
· St Catherine’s Parents & Toddler Group
· St Vincent’s Housing
· Toddler Tales Sessions (Friday mornings for 0-3 years) & Toddler Time (at the Well Centre)
2.3 What families really value about local assets
Families valued the places they visit with their children where there is free access to facilities and activities.