Research

SCiP Alliance

About the Service Children’s Progression (SCiP) Alliance

SSCE Cymru is a member of the SCiP Alliance practice group, and participates in the activities it conducts.

The SCiP Alliance’s vision: Thriving lives for Service children.

The SCiP Alliance’s mission: We bring together practitioners, researchers, policymakers and funders to build a stronger evidence-base, better policy, and enhanced support for Service children’s education and progression, placing their voices at the heart of all we do

The SCiP Alliance pursues this vision and mission by leading collaborative work to develop a robust evidence base, connect and support practitioners and influence the policy environment. Our responses are developed with and through young people with lived experience.

The SCiP Alliance:

  • Brings people together through a UK-wide community and Hub network, collaborative projects and high-quality conferences. This enables collective resources and expertise to be deployed effectively, improving practitioners’ work with Service children’s education and progression.
  • Develops easily accessible evidence-based resources and support - helping practitioners to confidently deliver quality support to Service children and each other, by sharing ideas, challenges and action.
  • Leads rigorous research that addresses Service children’s and their allies priorities - helping us to understand their lives and what works to improve them.
  • Raises awareness of Service children’s needs and provides evidence-based policy advice and guidance - helping Policymakers remove barriers to progression and target resources and support.

For further information on the SCiP Alliance, visit www.scipalliance.org

 

Thriving Lives Toolkit

The alliance has also curated the Thriving Lives Toolkit, providing schools with a framework of 7 principles through which to reflect on their practice and a 3-tier set of CPD resources. The resources in this toolkit have been developed in collaboration with a range of partners across the UK, and consist of:

  • An introductory animation;
  • A detailed resource introducing the evidence base, what schools can do to support their Service children and who can help and;
  • School case studies.

SCiP Alliance research

The SCiP Alliance is committed to improving further and higher education outcomes for Service children. It needs to know better before it can do better. That’s why the SCiP Alliance is a research–practice hub.

The SCiP Alliance produces briefings that help to summarise research and provide recommendations for practice and policy. Their subjects include resilience and moving schools. The briefing series can be found here.

More information about research relevant to Service children’s experiences can be found in the SSCE Cymru School Toolkit.

Progression of Service children to further and higher education

"Four out of ten Service children who have the ability to progress into higher education are unlikely to do so."
McCullouch and Hall (2016), Further and Higher Progression for Service Children

 

Listening to Learn: The Voices of Service Children

A programme of investigation to improve our understanding of how those supporting the children of Armed Forces families and veterans/ex-Service personnel put children’s voices at the heart of all they do.
Hall (2020), Listening to Learn: The Voices of Service Children

 

Funding for Armed Forces children and young people

The report, produced in association with the Directory of Social Change, aims to provide the first systematic and rigorous account of the landscape of funding for support for Armed Forces children and young people.

Howarth and Doherty (2023), Funding for Armed Forces children and young people

SCiP Alliance – Hwb Cymru

The SCiP Alliance network of regional hubs brings together partnerships that connect stakeholders so that they can:

  • Enable new and better collaborations
  • Facilitate communication
  • Build capacity and capability
  • Reach out to new stakeholders
  • Communicate with, contribute to, and draw from the SCiP Alliance Practice Group and Strategy Board
  • Share and respond collectively to:
    • Effective practice
    • Challenges
    • Ideas
    • Priorities
    • Questions.

The University of South Wales (USW) and SSCE Cymru run the SCiP Alliance Hub Cymru collaboratively. The first meeting took place in November 2019 and bought together organisations to discussion research, policy and University engagement with Service children and the Armed Forces community in Wales.

 Organisations involved in the SCiP Alliance – Hub Cymru include:

For further information about how to get involved with the SCiP Alliance – Hub Cymru, please contact SSCECymru@wlga.gov.uk

Service children’s quotes

"As soon as we get used to a house, you get moved - I’ve been to four schools and moved six times."

Aiden

"I lived in Nepal, then we went to Brunei, then Malaysia."

Ashim

"In my eyes, you have hundreds of friends in different places."

Chloe

"I’m used to moving now and mixing with the children... I’ve done it so many times, it’s just a normal thing now."

Chloe

"It's ok talking over skype and that, but sometimes you just want a hug when Dad is away."

Georgia

"He signed off last week, so he will be done by the end of this year. He’s done 24 years. I find that better because he will be around a lot. He likes watching us playing rugby, so he will get to see us more."

Lewis

"I’ve enjoyed going around to lots of places around the world, it's adventurous and exciting."

Harry

"In my eyes, you have hundreds of friends in different places."

Ieuan

"My mum got a chalk board and it says how many sleeps on it with chalk, every minute it’s getting closer for him coming home."

Mia

"I don’t want him to get promoted... I want him to get promoted but I don’t want to leave."

Oliver

"I might be going to boarding school so that I don’t change schools every few years."

Ryan

"I've been to seven different schools; I’ve not stayed put in one school long enough."

Shana

"He has been away for six months and he is back for two weeks, then he goes away again."

Sianed

"My parents were in the Army. My mum is a like a nurse and my dad went to the war in Afghanistan. I actually didn’t really know what he was doing so I was like, ‘Cool Dad, go there,’ but then I found out and thought, 'Thank God he came back alive.'"

Sanjog

"I’m going to a new place entirely. They don’t know anything about me and that’s a big restart and that’s really good for me."

Piaras

"I moved to Wales because my dad was posted in the Army. I thought I would get bullied and I was shy when you meet new people, but I made some friends."

Dan

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