Tower Hamlets Council: Creating a Borough Wonderful for Children

The Challenge
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Tower Hamlets faced persistently high levels of youth offending, child maltreatment, and intergenerational disadvantage. Despite earning Beacon Status for its early intervention efforts, the borough’s approach remained largely reactive — with most interventions occurring after children had already started school, or long after signs of distress had emerged. There was a growing recognition that to truly change outcomes, support needed to begin earlier and be embedded within a proactive, coherent strategy.

Our Approach
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Cameron Consultants, through WAVE Trust, was commissioned to co-develop a framework that would help Tower Hamlets move from good to excellent in its support for children and families. Over a six-month period, we conducted 75hours of interviews with over 60 stakeholders across health, education, youth justice, early years, and community services. Drawing on global research and best practice, we co-created a three-tiered strategic framework, with a particular emphasis on primary prevention during the critical window from conception to age 3. This was a significant departure from prevailing definitions of “early intervention,” which often focused on ages 7–10.

The Solution
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Our core recommendation was clear:
Tower Hamlets should switch from a strategy based mainly on reaction to a mainly proactive strategy.
We proposed a population-wide prevention model supported by targeted tiers:

• Multi-agency Tier 4 Units for families at highest risk, built around assertive key workers and evidence-based programmes like Family Nurse Partnership and     Mellow Parenting.
• Tier 3 Units embedded in Children’s Centres and schools, providing ongoing, relationship-based support.
• Community interventions (e.g. Family Group Conferencing, Roots of Empathy) to strengthen resilience.
• A     strong emphasis on quality assurance, staff selection, and fidelity     to proven methods.

The Outcome
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Our work helped Tower Hamlets crystallise a bold, research-based vision for systemic prevention. The framework secured multi-agency buy-in and informed future planning. As Helen Jenner, then Head of Early Years, put it:
“WAVE Trust's support has been instrumental in challenging our thinking about prevention and early intervention. They have helped us crystallise the key building blocks for our work with children and families. Stakeholders across agencies have all bought into this approach, and it is informing future planning. Our work with WAVE shows that an ambitious Local Authority and arigorously evidence-based external agency make strong partners in driving better outcomes for children and families.”