"A powerful new partnership, a nationally acclaimed engagement model, and a shared belief that "of course we can" find a better way forward"

A powerful new collaboration is set to bring creative, compassionate, and deeply personalised support to families and educators across Warwickshire.

Warwickshire's own education innovators have officially announced a strategic partnership with Who's Shoes, the nationally acclaimed, multi-award-winning engagement initiative that has spent nearly two decades transforming healthcare and social care across the UK.

Two organisations, two decades of separate groundwork, and one shared mission: cut through the jargon, protect the wellbeing of the people doing the caring and the teaching, and put children and families back at the centre of the conversation.

The impact

This is a partnership built on doing, not just announcing.

Who's Shoes joins the growing portfolio of the Warwickshire-based education initiative, sitting alongside Education Selection Box (ESB) - an award-winning Alternative Provision hub, deliberately left unregistered as a formal school so its flexible, child-centred curriculum can stay exactly that: flexible and child-centred and Give Get Go Education, the Community Interest Company (CIC) careers platform helping young people build transferable life skills across five creative pillars: theatre, film, creative writing, event management, and music.

Practically, that means:

• Helen's forthcoming guidebook, "Education is not complicated," becoming a founding resource for a brand-new Family Support Hub, built specifically to grow parent-to-parent networks rather than leave families to navigate the system alone.
• Specialist professional training for school staff, delivered under the communication and resilience umbrella in partnership with therapist and intuitive healer Yonne Haywood, blending trauma-aware education expertise with workplace nervous-system tools.
• Local trust schools preparing to trial the Who's Shoes interactive board game — the deceptively simple tool that has already reshaped conversations in dementia care and is now active in over 100 NHS maternity and children's trusts nationwide.

The why

Who's Shoes was born from founder Gill's thirty-year background in social care and quality improvement — a career spent watching good intentions get lost in systems, jargon, and paperwork, and asking a simple question instead: what if people just genuinely listened to each other?

That question is exactly the one this partnership was built around. Both sides of this collaboration know, from decades on the ground rather than from a policy document, that families navigating education, health, and social care are tired. Tired of jargon. Tired of forms. Tired of being spoken about rather than spoken with. And the professionals supporting them, teachers, TAs, school leaders, are running on empty trying to hold it all up.

As the partnership puts it plainly: you cannot pour from an empty tank. Supporting children properly means supporting the adults around them first, parents and professionals alike, with practical tools, not more pressure.

Making a difference

For families, it means a Family Support Hub built on real parent-to-parent connection, not another leaflet. For school staff, it means trauma-aware, nervous-system-informed training that treats their wellbeing as foundational, not optional. For children, it means a curriculum and a support network built around them from every angle, education, creative confidence, career pathway, and family stability rather than in isolated pieces that never quite join up.

And for Warwickshire more broadly, it means a genuinely local, genuinely joined-up model of support that other areas are already watching closely.

Looking ahead

True to both founders' philosophies, this collaboration is moving forward one practical step at a time, rather than waiting for a perfect, finished version before starting.

Gill is preparing to co-present at the prestigious HSJ Patient Safety Congress on 28 September, while local trust schools begin their trials of the interactive board game closer to home. Behind the scenes, both organisations are building towards a fully integrated digital and physical rollout under the shared 2027 Project Horizon.

Want to find out more, get involved, or bring this partnership into your own school or setting? Get in touch with Helen Kenworthy here.

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