Moving Up Moving On

Moving Up Moving On (MUMO) started in 2016 and works in partnership with Springfield Primary School and St. Clare’s Primary School to provide support services for children and parents. Springfield Primary School and St. Clare’s Primary are the two core schools. MUMO also delivers activities in a small amount of other schools to replicate the programme and share good practice family support work with more schools.

MUMO services are mostly cross community and include:

Programmes supporting parents and children such as Families Connect which aims to increase parent’s skills and confidence in supporting their child’s learning, focusing on emotional development; literacy and numeracy
Annual summer activities for up to 100 children from the two schools. This includes MUMO’s cross-community Summer Scheme which engages with up to 60 children and different summer activities in the two schools which MUMO supports.
Family Matters: a monthly session where parents and children from the two schools do an activity and eat together
Regular after-school’s activities such as sport and cooking
A weekly women’s group for parents/carers/grandparents from the two schools: participants engage in a wide variety of activities such as cooking; gardening; health awareness or sewing
Formal and informal education and training e.g. Five Steps to Wellbeing (Open College Network level two)
Exercise classes – pilates; aerobics; zumba
Regular health taster promotion events such as complementary therapy sessions
A transition programme, offering workshops for children in P7 to prepare them for moving from primary to post primary education.

Children Support Workers

MUMO employs two children’s support workers, with one based in each school. They can work one on one with children, with small groups of children or with whole classes. Both are trained in lego therapy and use this is a key resource. Some activities include:

Team building exercises
Exercise activities
Support with communication skills
Friendship groups
Literacy and numeracy support
Nurture groups
Lego therapy sessions

Family Engagement and counselling programme

MUMO family engagement workers (FEWs) provide one to one parenting support to parents. Support is wide and varied – including providing emotional support to accessing food/fuel vouchers for parents from partner organisations when available to supporting parents in school meetings to liaising with housing officers on behalf of parents in housing need to supporting families with free school meal forms. MUMO has a spare computer specifically for parents which they can use any time during office hours – not all of our parents have access to a device suitable for filling in forms. FEWs also organise and deliver an informative, supportive programme of activity for parents.

Thorough a partnership with Relate NI, MUMO delivers a counselling programme in the two schools for children who need counselling support. During the first year of the current funding programme (The National Lottery Community Fund’s People and Communities programme), the MUMO schools’ counsellor facilitated 123 sessions with children in the two schools. Support is also available for parents, making the service as holistic as possible, basing the counselling service on the principle that whole family support is the most effective.

In response to the return to schools in September 2020 after closure due to the Covid-19 pandemic, MUMO paid for full time counsellors in each school for two weeks to support returning children and teachers who had all been out of full-time education for almost six months. MUMO was able to respond in an effective and innovative way, thanks to funding from the National Lottery’s Covid Emergency Fund.

MUMO staff attend nurture meetings in St. Clare’s and pastoral care meetings in both schools. These are multidisciplinary meetings where the best options for support for vulnerable families are explored. MUMO staff can provide important insights into issues parents may be facing.

MUMO is passionate about providing meaningful opportunities for children and families to develop and strengthen relationships and increase motivation, confidence and aspirations.

MUMO has four outcomes:

Children make a positive transition from nursery to primary school, through primary school and from primary into post-primary school. Children approach learning with a positive, confident and enthusiastic outlook
Families will be engaged with education and learning and will have developed educational aspirations and goals
Improved relationships between school, family and community with an increased engagement of families in education and learning
Emotional wellbeing will be raised/improved due to the provision and support provided to families and individuals, including access to specialist counselling.

July 2021-July 2022

538 individual adults engaged with the MUMO programme

241 individual children engaged in the MUMO programme

In total, 779 individual adults and children engaged in the MUMO programme between July 2021 and July 2022

MUMO is managed through a project steering group (MUMO Advisory Parents Group) which consists of parents/grandparents/carers from the two schools. This group meets regularly to review activities and plan ahead for the coming term.

There is also a partnership group consisting of head teachers and deputy heads from the two schools, two Forthspring board members, MUMO project manager, Forthspring director and a representative from Relate NI. This group meets on a monthly basis and discusses activities suggested by the advisory group and issues in the schools which MUMO might be able to help with.

Click here to see the most recent evaluation report:http://MUMO Evaluation Report August 22_final

Click here to see an external evaluation of the 2021: Summer Scheme 21

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What people say about MUMO

What children say about MUMO

“She (the children’s support worker - csw) is the person to talk to. You need someone you can express your emotions to, and you need to trust them with talking about emotions or secrets. You can trust her”

“She gives you the ways to sort things out, and then we learn to use these ways for ourselves”

“If something is upsetting me, I wait until she [csw] comes back into school as she is not here all the time. When she is not here, she has told us how to cope: ‘smell in the strawberries and blow out the candle’. These breathing exercises help us, and make you feel calmer”.

What teachers and parents think about MUMO

“We have had a fantastic year with MUMO. What I really like is that MUMO has supported us in our wish to focus on mental health and emotional wellbeing next year across the board; with staff, parents and children. MUMO provides such a valuable service and has supported the development of a great partnership between the two primary schools, who had not previously worked together”.

“The work that the Family Support Workers do with families is wide ranging. They have supported families that I know of with Social Services, housing issues, transport and, childcare. They put the family in touch with other services that can provide support, they fill in the paperwork, and keep track of how the family are doing. The FSWs build rapport with parents, which builds their confidence and self-esteem. Their work gets parents motivated to be able to support their children; with additional MUMO opportunities in place, such as the parenting programmes and the Summer Scheme. The FSW helps us to find best supports for these families and does any homework we ask for. They have a fountain of knowledge, and signpost parents and families not only to MUMO but to other places. We try hard in school to improve parental support, but to get full support from some parents can be very hard. MUMO gets parents enthused, who wouldn’t otherwise be either able to or motivated to effectively support their children’s education”.

“We try hard in school to improve parental support, but to get full support from some parents can be very hard. MUMO gets parents enthused, who wouldn’t otherwise be either able to or motivated to effectively support their children’s education”.

"We have some children in school (for example those with ASD and other issues) who find it very difficult to cope with being outside in the playground, for them there are too many people in one place and too much noise. The CSW helps these children to explore issues, targeting the children who most need the help. Pupils are identified by the SENCO or class teachers. It is such a valuable resource to have the CSW who is there for a child experiencing unexpected trauma or a family crisis. The lego group and nurture groups (at lunchtime) have whole class benefits; if a child has anxiety this can be displayed in behaviours that affect the whole class."

“The kids loved the Summer Scheme. They also attend other MUMO projects and schemes. They love the leaders as well, the people here are fantastic with the kids.”

“I’m Catholic and my partner is Protestant, I love that MUMO is cross-community; there is no sectarianism, you’re just a person, it doesn’t matter where you live. Everyone, mums and kids, meet to have fun with other people”.

"Great wee class something to look forward to been locked up lol helps with my mental health encourage me to eat and drink healthy and my kids can join into which is great thank very much"

“Since joining MUMO my family have thrived; we have met friends and made new relationships that are so important to us now. I honestly would not be the person I am without MUMO. My confidence has soared, I can deal with my kid’s bad behaviour with confidence and keep things from getting out of hand. Everything about MUMO is amazing, especially the staff”.

“I’ve grown in confidence, and I’m now driving. MUMO helps because you listen to someone else’s story; it seems that someone there always knows something or someone and helps everyone out. In day-to-day life people hide things, and you feel you are the only person who is finding it hard to be a good parent. MUMO has really helped me”.

“Another thing is that I’ve made new friendships – for example we went camping all together. Last year we had the most fantastic weather in Castlewellan. The kids who came camping don’t know or care about the difference between Protestants and Catholics; it’s just being together as a family, being outside, and doing things together”.

“I’ve been doing things I never thought I could do. Now I get up in the morning and open the door without any kind of panic attack. MUMO has broken down all the barriers and fears I had about meeting people; it makes me feel I am normal; which is better for my kids too. Me and the family have been involved with MUMO just over a year now. It has been most productive year ever for me”.

“When the kids are happier the whole family is happier. I never knew counselling support was available for children; It has been very beneficial”.

If you would like to get involved or have a question about the MUMO project you can get in touch by emailing: mumo@forthspring.com.

The National Lottery Community Fund has been MUMO’s principal funder since it started in 2016. This funding is enhanced by grants from other funders – mainly for programme costs – such as Belfast City Council and the Public Helath Agency’s CLEAR programme.