The Cradle to Career Project

Cradle to Career is a programme that is improving the life chances of young people in the Liverpool City Region. It works at a neighbourhood level in each of the 6 authorities that make up the Combined Authority. The work in each place is defined by the priorities of the community working together with schools, youth providers, community organisations and the public sector through a Collective Impact approach. The programme is delivering significant and population-level results and provides much insight about the Collective Impact approach and how to deliver change at scale across a Region whilst centring the work in communities.

Resources were produced following key Cradle to Career events

These papers capture the conversation and learning from two programme events. The first captures learning from an event in April 2024 where multi-sector teams from each neighbourhood came together to share their experiences in areas surrounding the work. The second paper comes from an event with systems stakeholders and funders in the Liverpool City Region to explore how the system can better support the work. These documents were subsequently produced by the Place Matters team to summarise and capture the conversations, however the content and voices are those of the attendees and representatives from the Cradle to Career events.

For anyone who wants to understand what it means for people in places to work collaboratively and use a Collective Impact approach, it is essential and inspiring reading.

What is the role of Place Matters in this work?

Place Matters is the Learning Partner to the Cradle to Career programme in Liverpool City Region. We support the programme in coordinating, facilitating and capturing discussions from the programme's learning events.

How this resource supports place-based work:

Creating spaces for learning and reflection is critical for teams working in complex adaptive work. We use the triple loop framework to prompt questions around whether the work is focused on the right things and how we can assure ourselves that we know we are doing the right things. It is important to create the pauses and environment in fast paced and complex work to ask these questions and to support the people doing the work through connection and celebration of what is being achieved.