Nearly 50 people from our partner organsations across Gloucestershire came together today at Highnam Community Centre for our Growing Great Together, Celebration and Conversation event, reflecting on a successful year of collaboration and exploring opportunities for the future.
The event brought together organisations working alongside Gloucestershire Gateway Trust’s Children and Family Centre Service, providing an opportunity to celebrate achievements, share best practice and strengthen connections across the county.
Representatives attended from a wide range of partner organisations, including:
- The Venture Community Hub
- Fair Shares
- GL4
- Read With Me
- The Music Works
- Beezee
- Play Gloucestershire
- Blackbridge Community Hub
- NHS Gloucestershire
- GL Communities
- PATA
- Two Rivers Housing
- Gloucestershire Parent Carer Forum
- Bee Ready
- Aspire Foundation
- Forest of Dean Baby Bank
- Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust
- and many more…
The morning featured presentations from several members of the Gloucestershire Gateway Trust team, including Chief Executive Jason Dunsford and Alison Walker, Director of Children and Family Services.
Our Family and Community Connectors also shared powerful stories from their work over the past year, highlighting the positive impact of partnership working on local families and communities. Through examples drawn from events, family support and community engagement activities, they demonstrated how strong partnership pathways continue to help families access the right support and take steps towards achieving their own goals and aspirations.
Partners also heard from Mrs Summerbee, who spoke about her work delivering Bee Ready sessions within the Children and Family Centres. Her presentation highlighted how support from Gloucestershire Gateway Trust has helped develop and strengthen the programme, ensuring more families can benefit from early years support.
Round table discussions followed, focused on celebrating accomplishments over the last year, sharing plans and proposals for the year ahead and engaging in blue sky thinking about future opportunities to support children and families across Gloucester and the Forest of Dean.
Ben Morris, Director of Play at Play Gloucestershire said:
We’ve been a partner since the first gig really for the services, which is something I’m really proud of because it’s made a massive change to the communities that benefit from that service but also to the charities that are partners.
That partnership has really grown now in terms of the Children and Family Centres. We’ll hopefully be working out of those more in the future but also continue to be a part of the big events taking place in Gloucester and the Forest.
Days like today are always inspiring because you get to talk about the successes of lots of other people but then look at where your Venn diagram crosses over.”
Hannah from Beezee added:
We run healthy lifestyle programmes for children and families in order to support them to be happier and healthier.
Today was an amazing opportunity to meet other partners with Gloucestershire Gateway Trust and find out what work has been done over the last year, which was incredible.”
The event reinforced the Growing Great Together partnership and the shared commitment across organisations to build better prospects for children, young people, and families.
By bringing partners together to celebrate successes, share ideas, and shape future plans, the event provided an opportunity to reaffirm our ambition to continue delivering services through a strong community partnership. Collaboration lies at the heart of Gloucestershire Gateway Trust’s ethos, and our shared approach underpins everything we do, enabling us to work together to achieve the best outcomes for children, families, and communities.
