Hi, I’m Alan Wilson, founder of Develop Your Child and Family Coaching Café. I started Develop Your Child to satisfy my passion to wholistically develop millions of children globally.

Through my life coach training I realised that a platform of self-esteem is the foundation of any personal development. I also became aware how my 7-year-old daughter, who was beautifully balanced, confident and popular, was doing so well at school and I wanted all children to have her attributes.

Significant results
That was the start - working with children on their self-esteem, emotional literacy and goal setting. The pilot was in my child’s school where I was asked to help 8, eight year olds, who were considered not to be achieving to their full potential. Results showed significant improvements in their reading and maths SAT’s compared to the year group as a whole http://www.developyourchild.co.uk/palace-wood-junior-school.php .

This success encouraged me to write a similar programme for teenagers and in this case I included a ‘buddy’ who they could work with in challenging and supporting each other. This relationship carried over into the streets and the participants formed new friendships.

Through research I identified that in inner city areas both children and their parent/s seemed to have different problems and as a generalisation, any child with a problem had a parent with a bigger problem. My focus therefore moved to supporting parents and I did some specific parent coach training in the US. Later I became a parenting tutor for my local Adult Education establishment.

Break through the communication barrier
I wrote a self-help book ‘Listen to your children… and they will listen to you’ which incorporates a life-coaching programme to empower parents to create self-esteem in their children (and themselves) and break through the communication barrier.

I wanted to engage challenged parents with their teenagers and I wrote a programme to work with the whole family both as a group and independently. This led me to form a charity to take our work out into the community ‘Every Family Matters’. We have been able to attract 2 grants from Awards for All (part of the Big Lottery Fund) to implement and develop this Breakthrough project http://www.everyfamilymatters.org.uk/projects.html .

Next we will write applications to fund two new projects. ‘Ethos of Empowerment’ will coach students, their parents and teachers as a group and separately to surround young people with an ethos of empowerment. And also a project ‘Get a new life’ to engage with hard to reach families.

Our latest product is a DVD produced to get parents and teachers to see young people in a different light. ‘Kids are really different these days’ explores how and why young people are different and the impact on our parenting, teaching and our future.

A global reach
Develop Your Child now offers programmes and training for children, young people, parents, carers and the professionals working with these groups to create personal empowerment. A network of Authorised Coaches has been launched with appointment of coaches in the UK, United States, France, New Zealand and Singapore. There is also interest from potential licensees in a range of European countries Australia and Fiji. There are two completed training programmes, which have been accredited by The National Open College Network.

Perhaps the most exciting development is the ‘Family Coaching Café’ where we will be introducing our approach into the high streets to fulfil a huge latent need for supporting parents.

Finally, we believe our approach is unique; we support our clients to look deeper into themselves to see their potential. In doing so they become confident, independent, self fulfilled, balanced and self empowered. See some of our case studies and testimonials here http://www.developyourchild.co.uk/about-us.php .