Supporting & empowering families - Birmingham Pathfinder

A strong network of support for families

The Pathfinder works in 28 schools in South Birmingham. We provide sustained, relational support on-tap to families through schools, grounded in our values of nurture, social justice and ‘shared authority’.

We do this by building partnerships with schools and developing existing members of school staff (who remain funded by their school) to become School-Based Pathfinder workers. We support, supervise and mentor these workers, co-working complex cases with them.

We also connect them into our ecosystem of support agencies, so that they become a trusted guide and conduit for their families.

We use ‘Psychologically Informed Environments’ (PIE) as the foundation of our practice, meaning our work is trauma informed. We also offer PIE and NVR (Non-Violent Resistance) training to schools and families.

Working with schools to repurpose and develop their existing members of staff means the programme reconfigures existing capacity in the system around shared values and intentions – making the most of what already exists.

We are ambitious for change in the way systems work. We show it is possible to do things differently.

Why we exist

The Birmingham Pathfinder was established in 2016 by an experienced social worker, Rob McCabe, as a practical response to 30 years of witnessing systemic failings affecting the city’s most marginalised children.

The spark for the development of the Pathfinder was the negative trajectories of children at one ‘special school’ for children with ‘SEMH’ (social, emotional and mental health problems).

In 2012 and 2014, Rob undertook research to put figures to the extremely high financial costs to the criminal justice system of these negative trajectories. He used case studies to catalogue the terrible human costs to the children and families involved. A key issue was found to be the revolving door of repeated referrals to various agencies, meaning that families experienced a ‘carousel effect’, damaging their trust and sense of agency.

The Pathfinder emerged as a response to this and starts by recognising that a young person’s involvement in crime, with Children’s Services, homelessness and/or school exclusion is often a consequence of more entrenched challenges facing their family.

The Pathfinder also recognises that there is huge potential for schools as a place where family support can be situated. With the right resourcing and support, schools have the potential to really capitalise on the relationships they build throughout the 12 years of a child’s statutory school life.

Schools currently involved

Shared Authority families’ groups established to date

PIE and NVR courses offered to families to date

1370

Numbers of families supported since 2021

13.7

Number of FTE match-funded school-based workers

Number of years operational