Promoting equity through Comprehensive Community Initiatives in England

Comprehensive community initiatives(CCIs) are place-based strategies, working in highly marginalised neighbourhood contexts. They seek to develop a continuous ‘pipeline’ of holistic supports for children and families, throughout their schooling, and in their school, family, and community contexts. This chapter defines and contextualises CCIs and discusses challenges and opportunities from one such initiative – Newcastle’s West End Children’s Community(WECC). This involves an alliance of schools, community members, local charities, cultural and health organisations, the local authority, and a university. It is a loose area-based network formed organically. Data are presented from an embedded, co-produced, action-research project which informs the Community’s ongoing development. The analysis is primarily at the meso-level with regard for the macro and micro. The WECC offers universal and selected strategies. Concepts of relational agency and expertise, and assets-based development, are used to explore partnerships, strategies, and actions, emerging through CCIs. The chapter concludes that children’s zones raise fundamental questions about whether schools and their partners can play a transformative role in developing innovative responses to mitigating the impacts of social and economic inequality, the importance of a transparent and effective governance structure, the involvement of additional partners, the adoption of strategic indicators and how policy can support all these.