Enhancing lives beyond traditional metrics
How Rob McCabe and Lankelly Chase pioneered relational support in Birmingham
By Tchiyiwe Chihana, Generative Journalism Alliance
When asked what his collaboration with Lankelly Chase made possible, Rob McCabe doesn’t hesitate. “Pretty much everything,” he says.
The Pathfinder project Rob led was born from a desire to challenge social work and criminal justice orthodoxies – systems in which he’d spent most of his career supporting young people and families. But those systems didn’t sit right: too prescriptive, time-limited and transactional.
“You go in, work with the young person, work with the family, close the case, and move on,” he explains. “But for me that was never right. It wasn’t about relationships. It wasn’t about trust. And if you don’t have that, how can you expect people to really move forward?”
In other words, the system wasn’t built for lasting change. Yet Rob believed something different was not only possible – it was necessary. The problem was that it ran entirely counter to how the system was designed to operate.
Making space for something different
That’s where Lankelly Chase came in. “The funding was important,” Rob says, “but it wasn’t just about the money. It was about an organisation that understood the world of multiple complex needs, that saw the social harm being done by the existing system.”
Their support gave The Pathfinder credibility, not just financial but philosophical. It was Lankelly Chase standing alongside Rob, saying, ‘We believe in this. We believe people need to think differently if we’re serious about systems change.’
He had schools interested in this new way of working. He’d conducted research, published reports, and secured a small pot of police funding. The partnership with Lankelly brought momentum and legitimacy.
“To have people like Cathy and Jess saying, ‘We believe in this’ — the confidence you draw is immense,” he reflects. “The Pathfinder project was made far more possible because of their backing, not just financially but emotionally and intellectually.”
In systems riddled with siloed thinking and narrow definitions of success, Rob saw the possibility of something different. Lankelly Chase saw it too, and crucially, chose to act on it. Together, they made space for change that the system alone never would have allowed.
He describes the change The Pathfinder achieved not as incremental, but transformational. “It changed the dynamic,” he says. “The way we approached what we were doing completely shifted.”
At its inception, The Pathfinder was a modest pilot with just six schools. Today, it’s a recognised part of Birmingham’s early help offer – a testament to the enduring power of systems change, even at a small scale. Backed with as much belief as funding, The Pathfinder secured the trust of Birmingham Children’s Trust. “Though we’re small, we’re reimagining how children’s services could work. It’s seismic,” Rob reflects.
From pilot to platform: reimagining children’s services
That seismic impact shows in scale: from six pilot schools, The Pathfinder now works with over 30 across Birmingham and is expanding into new districts. Centrepoint’s support – bringing national youth homelessness expertise – has lifted it to new recognition.
None of this would have been possible without Lankelly Chase’s early, wholehearted backing. “They backed us heart, soul and mind,” Rob says. “They said, ‘We have a real conviction about this. This is absolutely the right way to work.’ That kind of backing is rare.”
Though The Pathfinder doesn’t directly tackle homelessness, its early-help model can divert children from homelessness, the criminal justice system or school exclusion. Unlike the mechanical requirements of the traditional funders (‘X amount in the bank, Y partners, Z outcomes’), Lankelly trusted intuition and offered agility without onerous terms.
That flexibility wasn’t just administrative, it was philosophical. Other funders hesitated to support The Pathfinder because it operated in the public sector, which they viewed as the government’s responsibility. But the public sector itself wouldn’t fund the work either – not because it lacked impact, but because it didn’t conform to prevailing ways of thinking.
“We’re called The Pathfinder, and what Lankelly did was walk that path with flexibility, belief and understanding that real change doesn’t come from ticking boxes. It comes from daring to imagine something different.”
For Rob, the deepest significance of his partnership with Lankelly Chase lies in willingness to trust instincts rather than demand rigid metrics. “Other funders want the numbers, the outputs, the families [numbers of] worked with,” he observes. He points to a fundamental shift in how they view success. Lankelly allowed space to experiment and learn. “We don’t always know what the outcomes will be, and we’re not even convinced it will work,” he says, “but it seems worth the investment anyway.”
That willingness to invest on faith alone, without onerous terms and conditions, revealed the shortfalls of the traditional funding model: a model that too often equates complexity with risk, and human systems with mechanical outputs.
It was this leap of faith that led The Pathfinder to adopt an “organic, ecosystem-type approach.” Lankelly didn’t just write cheques; they joined strategic boards, seconded staff into the programme and walked alongside the team. They modelled relational systems practice in action. “In human learning systems,” Rob reflects, “we can’t have a mechanical bridge approach. You’ve got to nurture, walk alongside people and allow for setbacks.”
This partnership as practice, rather than patronage, has shaped everything The Pathfinder does. It crystallises systems change as a living collaboration, not a linear path.
When asked what he’d change, Rob finds little fault. “Short of Lankelly ceasing to exist , there’s nothing I’d alter.” Yet he can’t ignore that Lankelly’s name may one day disappear. “I 100 per cent understand their decision [to close],” acknowledging that passing on an endowment can feel both a privilege and a burden. He worries that, without risk-tolerant capital, other teams in unforgiving public systems may never reach their potential.
Rob accepts shifting philanthropic priorities towards global and climate crises, but his focus remains on people and communities. He recalls how, on the brink of collapse, Lankelly “stood us up” when local authorities refused core funding. “If Lankelly hadn’t been there, The Pathfinder wouldn’t exist.” Their legacy challenges funders to trust their hearts, relinquish control and walk the path of systems change, however uncertain the destination.
On constraints, he notes that, while Lankelly never imposed restrictive terms, they could have immersed themselves more fully from the start. “They brought huge expertise but weren’t steeped in the public sector.” Acting as a “charter mark” for relational practice, he suggests, would have demonstrated how to reshape metrics, fiscal arrangements and relational approaches in real time.
Courage, proximity and imagination for other resource holders
Rob’s immediate need is clear: funding. “Money, of course.” Yet more critical is local authorities’ willingness as the primary stewards of public welfare to embrace alternative models rather than transactional contracts.
“In Birmingham, they pay my salary but none of the project costs.” He wants a seat at the table where senior officers can tour Pathfinder schools to see how relational early help prevents homelessness, exclusion or criminal justice entry.
“The Pathfinder has proven you can thrive without core funding,” he says. The challenge now is scaling success across a vast system like Birmingham City Council and beyond. Rob urges resource holders to abandon preset metrics and focus on human-centred measures – family stability, genuine happiness and solid foundations – that defy neat scores yet transform lives.
More than money or contracts, it’s about making time to listen, observe and adapt. “Let’s have a human lens on what success really looks like.” Only then will alternative Pathfinders flourish.
A ground-up lens for the field to flourish
The linchpin to a thriving field lies in rethinking metrics and decision-making – “Yes, we want children to avoid abuse or exclusion and to secure their GCSEs, but we also need a wider lens on what ‘good’ looks like.” He argues that top-down policy fails to capture local nuances. Instead, resource holders should embrace ground-up, ecosystem approaches, recognising that Birmingham’s ten districts, each home to around 100,000 people, have distinct demographics and challenges.
“In Northfield, where deprivation is entrenched among white European communities, policy lands very differently than in Sparkhill, with its large Southeast Asian population.” By nurturing local ecosystems – where families actively shape services – resource holders can craft place-sensitive solutions.
This shifts from one-size-fits-all prescriptions to shared authority, weaving lived-experience expertise into early-help design. Valuing organic, relational knowledge alongside data can reimagine children’s services.
Willingness alone won’t suffice; it must yield concrete steps. Although The Pathfinder sits within Birmingham Children’s Trust, proximity imposes constraints when research exposes system failings. Their bid for rapid evaluation fell short, so Rob proposes using existing system data. “We have the evidence. Let’s use it to demonstrate effectiveness,” while exploring leaner, in-house ways to capture qualitative impact without sacrificing frontline support.
His greatest hope is core funding. Every year brings financial year-end anxiety. “Core funding would be transformational.” Beyond survival, he dreams of a national shift – policy not trickling from Whitehall but cascading as locally adapted initiatives, shaped by community expertise. Freed from fundraising, The Pathfinder could focus entirely on children and families – delivering relational support that prevents crises and fulfils the promise of systems change.
Editorial support by Generative Journalism Alliance