West London Zone: Member Spotlight | February 2022
Watch the video below or read the text transcript to find out more about West London Zone and what they do to support children and young people.
Hi, my name is Robyn. I am a link worker at West London Zone. I work in a primary school in RBKC and have been a link worker now for four years.
Who are West London Zone?
So West London Zone are an organisation that work exclusively in West London. We work with large groups of children in lots of different schools, delivering something called the West London Zone Programme, where we help children to get on track with their social, emotional and academic kind of well being support. And we do that so that those young people can go on to thrive in adulthood with all the skills and resources that they need to do that.
How do you support children and young people?
We have trusted adults in schools across West London called link workers who get to know the children that they work with really well and design a personalised support plan for them across the two years, bringing together lots of partner organisations that we work with to deliver support for those young people.
And we also have links to community organisations that we try to kind of link up and join up the support for that child. We try and find those young people by doing like a data analysis or trying to work out the children that might benefit from working with the West London Zone programme.
What is the best thing about working for West London Zone?
I think the best thing about working for West London Zone is working with the young people. It's a privilege to get to know them across the two years. Get to know them really well and see them grow and develop as they try new supports and new opportunities. That is by far the best part!
What is your favourite thing to do in RBKC?
Good question. I think my favourite thing to do I love going up and down Portobello Road. We often meet for lunch around that area. And in the summer holidays and school holidays, we do lots of trips within RBKC. We use the WestWay and we have QPR sessions. So, yeah, all those parts of RBKC!
What do you think children and young people in RBKC need to hear?
I think children and young people in RBKC need to hear that they are awesome! That they have all the abilities and strengths to do whatever they want to achieve! And yeah, I guess that there are organisations and people that just want to give them that resource to support them to do that.
What has been one of West London Zone's biggest successes?
I guess as an organisation we are in the process of growing a lot more and we're now working in a lot more schools and secondary schools across our Zone. So that's been really positive and we're working with lots and lots of young people now and in terms of our growth, we've been able to grow our offer for children in the holidays and we've used our partnerships with QPR and London Sports Trust and all these amazing organisations to make sure that children and young people still have activities that they can access during the holidays.
In terms of, I guess my own one of success that I've seen within West London Zone, it makes me think of the young people that I've worked with who maybe when I met them were struggling in particular areas and they've been really brave and they've kind of come to the support, access the support, have used it and have really flourished and achieved what they set out to achieve and some of them have gone on to secondary school and I've been able to hear that they're doing really well in secondary school. So yeah, I guess that's definitely the biggest success is getting to see the children grow and develop as well as the wider organisational growth.
How can people get in touch and get involved?
So to find out more information, you can head to West London Zone's website.
at www.westlondonzone.org
There's lots of information about what we do and ways to support us. We're also really interested in any more community partners who might want to work with us. For parents, there's a parent video that we've recently created kind of explaining a bit more about our work in schools. So, yeah, head over to the website.
We also have social media channels @WestLondonZone so you can definitely interact and see our work on there as well!
West London Zone:
https://www.westlondonzone.org
Twitter: @WestLondonZone
Instagram: @WestLondonZone
