How Tapestry helps Hull Family Hubs demonstrate their impact on child development
Hull Local Authority has 8 main Family Hubs and 4 satellite hubs, delivered by a mixture of community sector groups and the Local Authority. Each Hub is unique, serving the needs of the children and families in its community.
Helen Tan, who is Early Years Standards Improvement Officer for Hull LA, implemented the use of Tapestry across the Hubs to support good practice.
Using learning journeys to show the impact on child development
The driving force behind introducing Tapestry was to enable Helen and the Family Hub teams to show the impact of the work they were doing. They take a case study approach, with ‘deep sampling’ of individual children’s learning journeys.
"We’re looking for the qualitative information about the progress a child has made. A learning journey on Tapestry tells a story of what attending sessions at a Hub has meant for a particular child and their family. "
A strategic overview for monitoring and reviews
As a leader supporting a group of Hubs, Helen uses Tapestry to give her an overview of all the Family Hubs across Hull. She can quickly show other members of the LA leadership team any specific areas of impact on child development and what different Hubs are focussed on.
"From my point of view Tapestry makes things so much easier. Wherever I am, I can log in to Tapestry. I don’t need to go and look through lots of paper journals, I can quickly and easily look up a case study to refer to for monitoring purposes. This helps me with performance management as well, which we do for each of the Family Hubs. Tapestry is there to support the practitioners as they talk about a child, helping them remember their learning and development story."
Supporting the home learning environment
A key focus for the Hull Family Hubs is finding ways to support the home learning environment, because this can have a positive impact on child development. They use Tapestry to connect parents and carers with their children’s learning and to help them understand how important their own input is.
"We wanted to enable parents to be more aware of how an activity could support their child’s learning, particularly around Communication and Language, or Number. With Tapestry, practitioners can share a photo or video of an activity and how it supports their child’s development. This helps parents to know why it is important and how it fits together. Tapestry also helps us share a child’s experiences with family members who aren’t at the Hub sessions."
Time saving, cost effective and eco-friendly
Prior to using Tapestry, the Family Hubs used paper journals to record children’s experiences. This meant time and money spent printing photos, cutting them out and sticking them in.
"Now all the Hubs use Tapestry, which has saved us time and money, and not printing all those photos is better for the environment too. Tapestry just keeps everything in one central place for us, which means our practitioners can spend more time with children and their families."
