A new approach: Reaching families through schools
- Written by:
- Published: 6th November 2026
A new pilot project will see a Community Links Worker to be placed in an East End Glasgow high school.
Following on from a successful partnership with SGN, the ALLIANCE has secured funding for a pilot project where a Community Links Worker will be based within a high school in Glasgow’s East End.
We have developed and managed a successful Links Worker Programme that has supported thousands of people over the past 13 years. Whilst we target areas of high unmet need, we are always researching who else we need to reach, and how we can make this happen. We realised that many families with school-age children are disengaged from health services and would benefit from support.
We previously spent time in St Andrews Secondary School in Glasgow with our Energy Efficiency Outreach Workers and have taken the learning from that to widen the support provided. Having a presence within the school meant that more families could be supported in a setting comfortable to them.
This is a very exciting opportunity and we are keen to take this forward to support as many people with unmet needs that we can. What better way to do this than through a local school where many of the families are in contact with teaching staff regularly?
Our aim is to reach a minimum of 240 families, supporting them with various issues in the year-long pilot. We are hoping that this will be an additional area reached, targeting families and young people to support issues related to child poverty, housing, relationships amongst others.
Our new Community Links Worker brings knowledge of community working and will use ALISS within their role to increase and catalogue supports offered within the local area. They will also be linking in with our Primary Care CLWs in the local and wider area to further increase knowledge and learning.
They will provide energy guidance, increasing the number of vulnerable people and families being registered to the priority service register and ensure participants are more aware of the dangers of carbon monoxide poisoning, as well as widening the learning, and ensuring a person led approach is taken to provide support to the individual for the issues that matter to them.
We are excited for the future of this pilot and look forward to watching the growth and development of the project over the coming year.
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