ABSTRACT
This chapter gives an account of how a project, intended to improve the lives of young families in Corby, was initiated, took form and produced some significant outcomes. The work in Corby took place within a national project funded by the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA) and facilitated by the Innovation Unit (IU), called ‘Transforming the Early Years’ (TEY). The TEY project had a planned focus on exploring how services for families with children aged five and under could be reorganised so that they were more responsive to families’ expressed needs as opposed to a universal offer. One of the key findings of the Corby TEY project was that, while families did indeed want different and improved services for their pre-school children, they also wanted additional services for their older children and for themselves. The project gave rise to the emergence of a group of parents who wanted to become more engaged in shaping services in Corby through existing political structures. These parents wanted to actively encourage and involve other parents in this process.
