For the directors who commission support for care leavers: what Skills 2 Thrive is, who is already using it, and why the man who built it says he had to.
Dougie Stringer spent eight years in a leaving care team at Cheshire East Council, first as a Personal Advisor and then as a qualified Social Worker. He’s also care experienced himself, and he says the two vantage points showed him the same thing. “I’ve seen all too often the consequences of young people not being adequately prepared for leaving care and independent adulthood,” he says.
Ask him why his profile says young people should thrive and not just survive, and he answers with numbers: care leavers nine times more likely to face homelessness, around a quarter of the adult prison population care experienced, four in ten care leavers aged 19 to 21 not in education, employment or training. That last figure is the Department for Education’s own. In its latest release, 40% of care leavers aged 19 to 21 were not in education, employment or training, against an estimated 15% of all young people that age.
Skills 2 Thrive is his answer. It’s a digital life skills platform, asynchronous, so a young person opens it when they choose, built from short videos of around two minutes, some of them delivered by care experienced professionals, with interactive learning, quizzes and a certificate at the end. The modules cover tenancy readiness, money management and budgeting, resilience and growth mindset, health and wellbeing, education, employment and training, and a set of practical ‘How To’ videos: how to change a lightbulb or a plug, unblock a sink, reset a fuse box, use a washing machine. Local authorities and fostering agencies commission it for the young people in their care. “It’s like having a mentor in your pocket, available 24/7!” he says.
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Thrive, not just survive
Dougie answers that phrase with his own story as much as with the statistics. “When young people can see positive role models, opportunities and people who have overcome similar challenges, it can completely change what they believe is possible for themselves,” he says. That is why care experienced professionals deliver some of the videos.
He wrote about the same idea after speaking at the Foster Wales conference, under a photograph of five care experienced social entrepreneurs: “It’s why having care-experienced voices throughout the Skills2Thrive® platform is so important, but also why I believe all organisations need to work with care-experienced people, not just create services for them.”
“We’re here to prepare, empower and inspire young people to thrive in all areas of their lives, not simply survive the transition into adulthood.”
Dougie Stringer, Founder and Director, Skills 2 Thrive® Ltd
The videos are the front of the platform. Behind them sit the quizzes, interactive learning and certification, which he says are there “to help young people develop their knowledge, test their understanding and recognise their achievements”. What the people who commission it see is a different screen.
Who is using it
“Skills 2 Thrive® was originally developed in 2022, but we’ve come an incredibly long way since then!” Dougie says. Its local authority partners are Birmingham Children’s Trust, West Northamptonshire Council, Lincolnshire County Council, Cheshire West and Chester Council, Sheffield City Council and Hertfordshire County Council. The fostering agencies and organisations working with it include National Fostering Group, Team Fostering, Capstone Foster Care, Blue Sky Fostering, Nexus Fostering, Shaw Trust and Homes 2 Inspire. “We’re currently supporting 3,600 young people across the UK through Skills 2 Thrive®,” he says.
Sheffield, the newest of the councils, shows the shape of a commission as the company describes it. The council came with objectives drawn from what its own young people had asked for: finance and money management, tenancy readiness, practical independent living skills, content delivered by people they can relate to, and better preparation for adulthood. The platform is being used with its Staying Close cohort. A partner can also build its own modules inside the platform for local content and local services, and teams can track progress and evidence outcomes through a data and analytics portal. The practical videos keep growing too: HBC Construction, a construction firm, is collaborating with the platform on practical ‘How To’ videos, from unblocking a sink to turning off the water.
“What I’m particularly proud of is that we’re not simply building a digital platform and expecting young people to use it,” Dougie says. “We’re continually listening to young people and professionals, understanding what works, what doesn’t and how we can make it even better.” He nearly didn’t get the job that led here.
The Service Manager who saw something
Dougie was a Sales Manager in Warrington in his mid-twenties, and by his own account doing well. “I didn’t feel like I had a real sense of purpose, and at 26, I knew I wanted to give something more back,” he says. He had coached children’s football in Colorado and worked briefly in a children’s home in Cheshire, “which is where my passion for supporting young people really started”. He applied for a Leaving Care Personal Advisor role at Cheshire East Council.
“Interestingly, I actually scored lower than some of the other candidates during the interview process, but the Service Manager at the time must have seen something in me,” he says. “Despite having limited professional experience in the sector, other than my own lived experience of being in care, they gave me an opportunity.” He started in 2016. “That decision was a huge turning point in my life and ultimately became the catalyst for my career in children’s services.” The next turn came the same way: someone senior decided to back him.
A D in maths, and a Director who backed him
After several years as a Personal Advisor, Dougie wanted to qualify. “I wanted to challenge myself further, become professionally qualified and support young people earlier in their journey, before they reached the point of leaving care,” he says. His first application for the Social Work Degree Apprenticeship was rejected: his Maths GCSE was a D, and the course required a C, “despite already having a 2:1 degree in Sport Science”. The Director of Children’s Services advocated for him. “I still had to re sit my maths unfortunately, but I was able to enrol on the course,” he says. “I’ll always be incredibly grateful for that opportunity.” He completed the degree at the University of Staffordshire with a 2:1 and became a Social Worker in the same team.
“Whilst I absolutely valued my time as a Social Worker, I became increasingly frustrated by how little time I could actually spend directly supporting young people.”
Dougie, Founder and Director, Skills 2 Thrive® Ltd
“So much of the role was taken up by paperwork, assessments, care plans, referrals, risk assessments and constant meetings,” he says. “I knew there was so much more that needed to be done to prepare young people for adulthood and I genuinely felt I could make a greater impact by doing something different.” That is when he decided to go out on his own and develop Skills 2 Thrive. “Of course, it was a huge risk, particularly leaving behind the security of a professional career, but I believed so strongly in what I wanted to achieve.” He credits the Royal Academy of Engineering, whose Regional Talent Engines programme he completed in 2025, and “a couple of brilliant directors at Birmingham Children’s trust” with helping him turn the idea into a company. “And it’s a decision I’m incredibly grateful I made.”
The Power of One
Asked for the person who shaped how he works, Dougie names Steven Russell and his belief in the “Power of One”. “The importance of building relationships and trust before anything else,” he says. “Without that connection, it’s incredibly difficult to create meaningful, lasting change. It’s something that’s stayed with me throughout my professional career and continues to shape how I work today.”
It shows in the hard moment he chose to tell. He was due to run a face to face onboarding session for young people at one of the local authority partners, demonstrating the platform, and woke that morning with food poisoning. “I absolutely hate letting people down, so rather than cancel, I managed to deliver the session online instead,” he says. “It was genuinely one of the hardest meetings of my career, but I got through it!”
Where Dougie Is Now
This year the platform is adding partners and content: Sheffield City Council and Shaw Trust with Homes 2 Inspire are the latest, and the ‘How To’ library is growing. Alongside it, Dougie has launched Thrive Support, an alternative provision in Cheshire for young people at risk of exclusion or of becoming NEET, which blends sport, music, creative arts and construction with what his profile calls strong relational practice and solid social work foundations. The feature, though, is about the platform, and so is the ask.
The reader he most wants is a Director of Children’s Services. In his words, the piece should “raise greater awareness of Skills 2 Thrive® among Directors of Children’s Services within local authorities, who have the ability to commission the platform, support us in continually improving and developing it and ultimately help us reach and empower even more young people”.
Outside work he trains almost every day: Thai Boxing, running, the gym, or hiking with his dog. “Beyond the physical benefits, it’s the mental wellbeing, community, relationships and sense of belonging that sport provides,” he says. “I genuinely believe sport has probably saved my life, and that’s a huge part of why I’m so passionate about using it to support and empower other young people.” He keeps a second line beside his own, one he has borrowed: “Life is not about what happens to you, but how you respond to what’s happened to you.” Both, he says, are about the same thing: “recognising that our past does not have to define our future”.
“We’ve made significant progress, but I genuinely believe we’re only just getting started!” he says. And then the line he has been saying for years: “If you can see it, you can believe it.”
Five Lines from Dougie’s Diary
- “If you can see it, you can believe it.”
- “It’s like having a mentor in your pocket, available 24/7!”
- “I absolutely hate letting people down, so rather than cancel, I managed to deliver the session online instead.”
- “I genuinely believe sport has probably saved my life.”
- “We’ve made significant progress, but I genuinely believe we’re only just getting started!”
From the Diary of Dougie Stringer
Dougie Stringer is a Manchester-based social entrepreneur and the Founder and Director of Skills 2 Thrive® Ltd.
| Role | Founder and Director, Skills 2 Thrive® Ltd |
| Based in | Manchester, England |
| Previously with | Cheshire East Council, 2016 to 2025 (Personal Advisor, then Social Worker) |
| Also with | Thrive Support, Cheshire (Founder) |
“If you can see it, you can believe it.”
Editor’s note
The editors chose Dougie Stringer because he has stood on both sides of a leaving care team, as a young person in care and as the Personal Advisor and Social Worker employed to support them, and built his platform from what those years showed him. Six local authorities and seven fostering agencies and organisations are using it, and he puts the number of young people on it at 3,600. What convinced us is in his answer on where the platform stands: he is as interested in what young people say does not work as in what does. His quotes appear as he wrote them.
Executives Diary, Editorial
