Meet Cobseo’s Members: Service Children’s Progression Alliance

Tell us about your organisation…

We bring together practitioners, researchers, policymakers, and funders to strengthen evidence, improve policy, and enhance support for service children’s education and progression, keeping their voices at the heart of everything we do. We lead collaborative initiatives to connect and support practitioners and influence the policy environment.

How does your organisation support the Armed Forces Community?

The SCiP Alliance supports the Armed Forces Community by coordinating a UK-wide network of professionals working with children from serving and veteran families. Through our Hubs, led by regional partners, we enable schools, charities, local authorities, researchers, and policymakers to collaborate, share insight, and respond to local needs while contributing to national impact.

Our Thriving Lives Toolkit helps schools and settings understand and improve support for Service children. This evidence-based framework is expanding across the student life course, enabling practitioners from early years to higher education to take a consistent, rigorous approach.

The SCiP Alliance Impact Centre complements this by acting as a central hub for identifying what works and embedding evidence-led practice. It supports organisations and individuals to develop skills in evaluation, ensuring collective effort, time, and resources have the greatest positive impact on the lives of Service children from both serving and veteran families.

What makes you proud of the work in the sector?

We are proud of the SCiP Alliance’s UK-wide community of professionals, whose commitment and leadership improve outcomes for Service children. Across our Hubs, partners share insight, support colleagues, and drive change at local and national levels.

We are also proud of the growing recognition of the needs and strengths of children from military families, and of how the SCiP Alliance has helped shape a coherent, evidence-led approach to supporting them. The Thriving Lives Toolkit has been central to this, equipping thousands of practitioners to understand Service children’s experiences and enhance their provision.

Our work is further strengthened by the SCiP Alliance Impact Centre, which builds the infrastructure to identify, evaluate, and embed effective practice across the UK. What matters most is seeing this coordinated, community-driven effort translate into meaningful, positive change in the lives of Service children.

How does being a Member of Cobseo help you to do your work?

Being a member of Cobseo helps us work more effectively by connecting us to a wider network of organisations that support the Armed Forces community and by amplifying the voices of the allies in our community to Government. Cobseo also provides opportunities to engage across sector boundaries, helping us stay informed about emerging issues affecting military families and align our work with broader support initiatives.

Through Cobseo, the Alliance can collaborate with charities, service providers, and government partners to share insight, coordinate activity, and ensure that the needs of Service children and their supporters are heard and responded to.