Vision, Goal, and Values
Since our founding by Edward Rudolf in 1881, we’ve run children’s homes, supported child evacuees through world wars and helped children find a loving family home. Throughout our history, we’ve been there for the young people who need us, responding to the challenges of the time.
The lives of young people today look very different from those of a century ago, but they’re equally challenging. With increasing levels of poverty, reduced investment in the services young people desperately need, and a digital world filled with opportunity and risk, young people need change. Our determination to support young people is stronger than ever, and our organisation’s core values will be at the heart of our future work.
These values, and the voices and views of young people themselves, will be our foundation as we continue to fight for the future of hope and happiness young people need. We’re calling on everyone to join us in creating a society for all children. And we have an ambitious goal for the years ahead.
Our Vision
A society built for all children.
This is the world we’re creating. The day our vision comes true is the day we celebrate and close The Children’s Society. Because our work will be done.
We won’t rest until we’ve achieved our vision. Until, together with young people and our supporters, we’ve created a society built for all children. Until hope is alive in every child.
Our Goal
By 2030, we will have overturned the damaging decline in children’s wellbeing, setting a path for long-lasting growth.
This is our big, bold focus to drive our energy and efforts over the next five years. It will advise everything we do and every decision we make to help us take a giant leap towards our vision.
In the coming years, we are determined to make sure this generation of children has a better childhood. We will build a happier, safer society for young people to grow up in, one where they can look forward to their futures with hope.
Our Values
Alongside our goal, our values drive our efforts towards our vision.
We are brave,
unafraid to challenge injustice wherever and whenever we see it, fearless in our determination to ensure young people are heard. We try new things, we push boundaries and when we fail, we learn. And then we go again.
We are ambitious,
for the potential in all young people. For all that children can be in the future and for a society that is built for all children. We are ambitious about our role in bringing about that change too – pioneering new projects, boldly calling for radical change.
We are trusted,
delivering the best care and support available for young people. We never give up on them. We stay by their side through everything, no matter how hard things get, until things have changed for the better.
We are supportive,
and always see the good in every young person we help, inspiring them to new and greater achievements, helping them out of bad situations to see where their lives can go and what they can become. And we listen to and respect all young people.
The Children’s Society reaches children where they are to tackle the struggles they face today, providing complete support that’s specific to them, and challenging the government to deliver policies that will continue to protect them.
Teenagers are children too, but too often their needs are being ignored, with those most at risk only receiving help at crisis point. By providing the support they need to take on their futures with confidence, we can make sure that they never have to face life alone.
About Us
We provide specialist support that empowers young people to make positive changes and take on their futures with confidence.
Founded in 1881 by Edward Rudolf to help the poor and homeless, providing a secure family environment, The Children’s Society has developed over 140 years into the charity we are today. Each young person we meet is unique, and the way we work with them varies depending on the challenges they’re facing. They might be living in poverty or struggling with mental health issues. They might be being exploited or abused. Whatever their challenges, we work with them to find a way forward.
Our direct support for young people takes two forms: early intervention and crisis support. By tailoring the support we offer to young people and their needs at every stage, we aim to enable them to develop the skills, strategies, and support systems they need to thrive.
We work to change the systems surrounding young people, too, partnering with professionals, government, young people themselves, and others. Together, we’re building an incredible movement for change.
A lot has changed over the past 140 years. But our deep passion for and commitment to supporting young people remains as strong as ever. As we look ahead to 2030, we’re being more ambitious than ever.
For more information, click here.
Rosie’s story
“It felt like I could talk to my support worker about anything.”
When Rosie was 11, things were really difficult. Her dad had always been in and out of her life, but suddenly he became absent entirely. Rosie didn’t understand what had happened. Why didn’t her dad want to be in her life?
Her self-esteem was at an all-time low. To try to cope, Rosie turned to self-harm. At one point, she even attempted to take her own life. She didn’t know who to turn to. She thought that no one would listen if she tried talking to them.
When a group of older men tried to befriend Rosie online, asking her for images and encouraging her to meet them, Rosie thought she’d made some new friends, but they were offenders, known to the police. They were preying on Rosie and she was in real danger.
That’s when she was referred to The Children’s Society and met Alex, one of our specialist practitioners. They worked through different resources on staying safe on the internet and dealing with self-harm, and Rosie got support from one of The Children’s Society’s therapy services, too.
Today, she feels like a different person. She’s worked with us on advocacy projects, using her voice to help other young people and make change happen, and she’s got an apprenticeship.
The support Rosie received helped her to build the skills and support networks she needed to thrive. There is always a way, no matter how deep you’re into something.’
The Challenge
This year has been one of the most difficult yet for young people and their families. For over a decade, The Children’s Society’s Good Childhood Report has shown that young people’s wellbeing is getting worse. In 2024, the report revealed that too many young people are still unhappy with their lives. 11% of the children and young people who completed our survey last year had low wellbeing, and the report also found that the UK has the lowest average overall life satisfaction among 15-year-olds across 27 European countries.
The 2024 Good Childhood Report can be found here.
The challenges facing young people cannot be overstated. In the wake of the pandemic and amidst high living costs and global instability, support services are struggling to meet young people’s needs. Only a third of young people who seek mental health support get the help they need, and shockingly 4.3 million children in the UK are growing up in poverty. Every year, thousands of young people are exploited by criminals and estimates suggest that at least 1 in 10 children in England and Wales are sexually abused before the age of 16. For too many young people, help is only offered when they reach crisis point. This must change – now.
The Solution
For more than 140 years, The Children’s Society has been here for young people, pioneering and innovating new solutions based on our own research and evidence. We meet children where they are, providing complete support that’s specific to them.
From our own research and our daily work with young people across the country, it’s clear that there is an urgent need to expand early intervention support – to reach young people before things start to feel hard. When we provide effective, targeted, early support, we can help to prevent problems from escalating and give young people the best chance of flourishing.
We’re focusing our efforts on significantly increasing early intervention support through services like Time for young people. Designed with and for young people, these nationwide support spaces provide a safe, non-judgemental place to go. A place where young people know they’ll be heard. A place where they can get support right away, without long waiting lists or complicated referrals.
We have big plans to scale this model, creating more of these support spaces so that no child has to wait for the help they need. To do that, we know that we need to grow our income and organisational capability. That’s why we’ve set an ambitious growth plan for the coming years, with a major appeal aiming to raise more than £100 million by the end of the decade. This appeal is already live, and our first million came from BBC Children in Need, the single biggest grant they have ever made.
Our work is grounded in relationships like these – with partners, professionals, government, young people themselves, and, crucially, our supporters. Together, we’re working to transform the systems that surround young people, whether that’s in education, justice, health, or social care. To build the future young people need, we must change policies, practices, and attitudes. Our knowledge of what works and what needs to change is drawn from our experiences, our research, and our partnerships.
Our Plans for Growth
The past few years have been demanding for many charitable organisations – including The Children’s Society.
We have faced the Covid-19 pandemic, rising inflation, escalating living costs, recessionary economic conditions, the impacts of the war in Ukraine, the contraction of the charity sector, and a challenging recruitment market. These combined pressures have contributed to a reduction in charitable giving across the UK, impacting our ability to grow unrestricted income. At a time when children and young people most need support, we have fewer resources and less capability to support them.
We can take some encouragement that we have been able to navigate these challenges, to a large extent, by managing our resources well and safeguarding our balance sheet. Additionally, we have established a new impact fund, which has allowed us to release £4.5 million from endowment funds to invest in our frontline work. This has positioned us to be able to build a major fundraising appeal and create a portfolio of cutting-edge developments. The latest triennial actuarial valuation of our defined benefit pension scheme shows the scheme to be fully funded on a technical reserve basis, and retail performance has been outstanding.
As we have developed our strategic plans, we have increasingly recognised that we will need to significantly grow the size, scale, and value of our supporter base if we are to build the resources we need to achieve our strategy. To not only ensure our long-term sustainability, but also create a step change in our income profile – so we can grow our investment in activities that will achieve the necessary impact with children and young people. The launch of our major fundraising appeal will drive this step change – with a target to raise in the region of £100 million of new income by the end of the decade, uplifting the baseline of the organisation above our current size and scale.
Our growth plan spans from year 1 in 2024/25 through to 2032, with three objectives:
- Growing our impact with and for young people.
- Growing our income to deliver greater impact.
- Growing our organisational capability to enable impact and income.
This strategic investment and growth plan is ambitious, but so is the impact we want to see for children and young people. Life is simply too hard for too many young people, and they need us now more than ever before. We are confident that this course of action will help to unlock The Children’s Society’s potential and achieve the step change in our income profile that we need to meet our ambitions and achieve our 2030 goal.
Our Impact
Our work is child-centric, holistic, and responsive to young people. We confront and challenge hard truths. We work directly with young people and their families when they most need support:
- by providing specialist support for victims of criminal and sexual exploitation and those who have gone missing from home.
- by standing alongside and advocating for unaccompanied children seeking safety and victims of trafficking.
- by providing life-changing therapy and counselling for young people struggling with mental health challenges.
- by leading the only annual survey of young people’s wellbeing across England and Wales.
- by supporting children at risk of harm through domestic violence or abuse.
Each year we work with thousands of incredible young people. As well as supporting young people directly, we also work with police, teachers, social workers, and other professionals to change the systems that are harming young people’s futures.
We believe that there is a need to continually adapt and change service delivery in line with a continuously changing world. As such, throughout the last year we have been testing, improving and scaling up models of service delivery to bring positive change to young people’s lives even more effectively.
In numbers:
- We worked directly with more than 72,016 young people.
- 5,865 parents and carers.
- We ran 301 youth voice activities to give young people opportunities to share their insights, stories, and experiences with us.
- Through our systems change work, we have reached 16,032 professionals such as police, teachers and social workers, helping increase their understanding of the issues faced by young people and changing the way they respond to them.
- 177,318 people actively engaged with us by volunteering, donating, fundraising, and campaigning.
- 3,200 incredible volunteers gave their time and skills at our shops and services across the country.
Time for Young People
Launched in 2024, Time for young people offers free help for children and young people, whatever’s on their mind. There are no waiting lists. Young people can walk in and access support to work through how they’re feeling, and as many times as they need to.
The service has been designed with and for young people and is on offer at several locations across the country. Young people choose what support they access and when. They’re empowered to take time for themselves and work through their problems with a trained practitioner. With Time for young people, they’ll get the help they need to understand their feelings, build stronger relationships, and make positive moves towards their futures.
Each Time for young people location will meet local and individual needs, providing the right support at the right time. That might include a permanent support space where young people can drop in for help, sessions in community spaces like schools and libraries, help online or by phone, or a combination of these.
Our first Time for young people service, in Newham, became operational in February 2024, with our physical support space opening in September that year. Our first year in Newham has focused on building solid relationships with key organisations and professionals in the area, communicating with young people and their families, and delivering emotional wellbeing support. Since opening, we have worked with more than 660 young people and more than 360 parents and carers through one-to-one support, group sessions, workshops, and community events.
Time for young people support spaces are also running in Leeds, Torbay, Coventry and Warwickshire, and Newcastle. Each one is tailored to local need, aiming to prevent emotional health and wellbeing challenges from escalating into crisis by providing a space where young people can walk in and get help right away. We plan to build robust data and evidence to show that this works in the coming months, attracting more funding and influencing policy change.
Space to Grow
Space to grow is a nationwide partnership between The Children’s Society in England and Wales, Children First in Scotland, and MACS in Northern Ireland. It aims to deliver early intervention emotional wellbeing support to children and young people aged 8 to 13.
This support will be provided by individual project workers embedded in existing services at 11 locations in England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland; in Wales, two new sites will be established with project workers and service managers.
The programme is funded by a £1 million grant from funding partners BBC Children in Need, The Health Foundation, and Impact on Urban Health, matched by a further £1 million from The Children’s Society’s impact fund. Space to grow will run for an initial two years, with the goal of supporting 6,000 children across the country.