Working with charities to deliver for the community: Families Thriving Together

Families Thriving Together is a charity founded in Southeast England in 2022 by CEO Michelle Tucker, which brings parenting support to hundreds of families each year – most of them through referrals from the local authority. Michelle has years of experience delivering local authority settings and has a unique understanding of how local authorities and local charities can work well together.
The charity's mission is to normalise parenting support and remove barriers to access, delivering evidence-based programmes free of charge to all participants. Programmes include The Nurturing Programme, Keeping Your Child in Mind, Talking Teens, Welcome to the World, and Parenting Puzzle workshops, all developed by The Centre for Emotional Health.
This case study draws on a conversation between Michelle Tucker (Founder and CEO of Families Thriving Together), and Robin Lerner (Head of Impact and Research at the Centre for Emotional Health). Michelle and Robin explored how Families Thriving Together does and doesn't work alongside statutory services, what that relationship looks like in practice, and what Michelle would like to see change.

The charity built its model around an open-door philosophy, something Michelle traces back to her experience of Sure Start Centres. The combination of open access, community collaboration, and free provision made parenting support reachable.

Crucially, the charity mainly works through partner agencies like statutory services, schools, children's services, adolescent services, family centres, who all refer families. Because the charity manages the entire delivery process and programmes are free to participants, the burden on referring organisations is minimal.

We don't ever advertise directly to parents. We work with our partners, we work with the statutory agencies, we work with the local authority. Because we do that, we get so many people come our way — via referrals, or just because they're sharing a poster and people register."

The charity delivers programmes both online and face to face. Michelle is clear that online delivery is not equivalent to in-person contact, but many parents say they simply would not have attended face to face. Parent feedback points to barriers like anxiety, time pressures, or the practicalities of working long hours. 

The relationship is active and productive at the operational level, but almost entirely non-financial. Local authority teams, schools, and statutory services refer families, share posters, and signpost people to Families Thriving Together's programmes. The charity fills a gap that statutory services struggle to cover, and those services recognise that contribution and are grateful.

The local County Council provides no funding to the charity. The occasional small grants from borough councils (typically in the region of three to five thousand pounds) are welcome but short-lived. The day-to-day relationship, while cooperative, is essentially one-directional: statutory services benefit from the charity's provision without contributing financially.

"We're running stuff all over the place for different authorities. Most of the people will be referred via, say, local adolescent services. They're clapping their hands, thinking, great, just referring, it's free, costs us nothing."unning stuff all over the place for different authorities. Most of the people will be referred via, say, local adolescent services. They're clapping their hands, thinking, great, just referring, it's free, costs us nothing."

There is also a meaningful working relationship on safeguarding. The charity follows the County Council's referral procedures, speaks with families before sharing any information, and liaises directly with existing support workers or social workers when concerns arise. Social workers, in turn, sometimes ask how families have engaged with programmes, although Michelle and her team are necessarily careful about what she can and cannot share.

Many family support workers in the local authority have trained in parenting programmes, including programmes from The Centre for Emotional Health. However, many find it difficult to deliver as many programmes as Families Thriving Together. 

Michelle’s experience is that the problem is growing caseloads. Where a family support worker might once have carried five families, many are now managing fifteen or more, with most of that work being 1:1 rather than in groups. Delivering group programmes on top of that level of individual casework simply isn't feasible.

"It's not because they don't want to. They don't have the capacity. You may have had five cases as a family support worker — I think they're up to 15 now, a lot of them."

The consequences are significant. Where group work does happen within statutory services, it tends to be infrequent and lacks the consistency needed to build momentum within the local authority teams. Group programmes reach multiple families simultaneously, build peer relationships, and generate outcomes that individual casework cannot replicate. Families hear from each other, try things that others have found helpful, and gain confidence through shared experience. That dynamic is absent from a caseload model.

The loss of group-based working affects not just families but those practitioners too. Michelle reflects that doing only one-to-one work must be demoralising for people who trained to deliver groups that are frequently rewarding and reach more people. This was a factor in Michelle’s decision to leave her previous role in an early help team.

The answer, Michelle says, is structural simplicity: the charity does one thing and does it well. There are no caseloads, no competing demands, no bureaucratic constraints pulling facilitators away from programme delivery. That focus is intentional and protected.

This is what we do. We don't do anything else. We know what we do and we do it well. I think that's probably why it works — because you're sticking to what you know works best."

The group facilitators are paid, experienced practitioners, many of whom Michelle has known through her years in the sector. A number still work part-time in statutory or school settings and take on facilitation work alongside that. What they share is a genuine investment in the programmes and the skill to hold a group: welcoming people, being perceptive to individual needs, nurturing participants through a vulnerable process, and building trust and rapport. For many facilitators, this work offers something their statutory roles no longer can: the energy and visible impact of group work.

At ground level, the relationships are good. The charity uses community and family centre venues for free, maintains strong links with schools, and finds that people on the ground are generally supportive.

Michelle is direct about what she wants and what she feels is currently absent. Financial support is the obvious need. 

Alongside financial support Michelle talks about something less tangible: recognition. The sense that decision-makers within the local authority do not fully understand what the charity is doing on their patch, or how much of it.

"I'd like some respect from them for what we are actually offering to all of their families — families that they have a duty of care for. 

We don't have a duty of care. We do care, and we honour our duty of care. But we don't actually have one. And yet we don't get anything from [the Local Authority]."

A practical expression of recognition for Michelle would be a seat at the table: involvement in steering groups, consultation with decision-makers, acknowledgement of the scale of delivery. 

"You need to listen to your community groups, listen to what they're doing, listen to your charities. Often the small charities are doing absolutely huge stuff out there — and they're actually seeing the service users. They know what the need is and they have information that could really benefit services. I just think they're completely missing a trick."

The charity collects outcome data from every programme: a simple Google Form in which most participants answer questions at the start and end of each course. There is also space for open-ended comments, which consistently produces rich qualitative feedback. The data sits in a spreadsheet, currently underused.

"I think they'd be shocked if they realised — if they saw some sort of research and evaluation as to what we've delivered and what that looks like across [the] Council." 

Michelle has the data but not the time or resource to analyse or present it well. She is aware of its potential value both for demonstrating impact to funders and for informing the local authority about what is happening. But she is also cautious. Sharing data carries a risk that others will claim credit for work the charity has done.

"I don't want them to steal it. I'm not protective of the data because I want them to see it — but you just have to be a bit mindful that someone doesn't walk off and say, 'Oh, look what we've done.'"

As part of this case study The Centre for Emotional Health agreed to analyse some anonymised feedback data from parents who attended programmes run by Families Thriving Together. Some of the results are below.

The people referred to programmes (over 950 since 2024) are on average 44 years old, have 2 children, with 22% of with a child under 5. Parents were from a range of ethnicities (78% White, 7% South Asian, 3% Black), and 20% identified as Fathers.

226 parents gave feedback after taking part in The Nurturing Programme (91), Talking Teens (112), Keeping Your Child in Mind (16), and Welcome to the World (XX), and The Parenting Puzzle (7). Parents reported their skills and confidence across key areas as part of the end of programme feedback. 

For The Nurturing Programme the fraction of parents reporting higher confidence (4 or 5 out of 5) rose across all areas, including empathy and feelings (up from 25% to 88%):

"I am implementing some of the tools that I can do myself — more empathy, listening more, ignoring the little things."

and in listening and communicating clearly (from 13% to 69%):

"It has certainly made me stop and think more about my reactions and relationships within the family."

and being better able to nurture themselves (up from 18% to 62%):

"I have learned to much and have made lots of changes, not only to the way I parent, but also more reflection on how I parent and now actually looking after myself."

"In this past four weeks, I've completely changed as a person. These four weeks have completely changed my life."

The experience of Families Thriving Together illustrates the kind of voluntary sector partnership that Best Start Family Hubs and Healthy Babies guidance asks local authorities to build and sustain. 

The guidance is explicit that local authorities should provide sufficient funding over a three-year period. In addition, local authorities should invite commissioned organisations to play an active role in governance and recognise them as vital partners in broadening the reach of support.

Families Thriving Together is filling a gap in group-based parenting provision, carrying none of the caseload pressures that constrain statutory teams, and delivering at scale. 

The guidance also emphasises that community insight and family voice should drive the design of local networks, and that partners who are seeing service users directly are best placed to understand local need. The recent guidance asks local authorities to convene partners, share data, and build genuine collaboration. 

For organisations like Families Thriving Together, a seat at a steering group table, support with impact measurement, and multi-year funding commitments would be very welcome.

More information

To learn more about Families Thriving Together or to contact Michelle, please visit https://familiesthrivingtogether.org.uk/

To learn more about The Centre for Emotional Health and the programmes they offer, please visit https://www.centreforemotionalhealth.org.uk/ or email [email protected]