In 2023 children & families' needs for support are greater than ever
I first joined Children 1st’s Board of Trustees two years ago during the covid pandemic. It was one of the most challenging times that charities, like Children 1st, have ever faced. With children and families’ usual sources of support unavailable, the need for the services Children 1st offer grew and grew.
I was in a full- time job that felt very comfortable and was looking for something new. I had experienced trauma, as a child and one of my three daughters, our chosen daughter, joined our family as a teenager having been through all sorts of different parts of the care system. I knew that I wanted to do something challenging, that was really going to light my fire. Hearing about how Children 1st supports children and families in local communities across Scotland while also working to bring about significant systems change to transform things for every child and family, for example by leading the campaign to end physical punishment in Scotland, inspired me to join the Board.
Shortly after I joined, I had the privilege of meeting Aminata on a (what was by necessity virtual) visit to Children 1st’s Glasgow team. Aminata and her new born baby arrived in Scotland as asylum seekers just before we went into lock down. With the country in crisis, Aminata felt totally alone. She was scared and didn’t know where to turn until a health visitor put her in touch with Children 1st. From then on, a Children 1st family support worker spoke to her every day, offering the practical support that Aminata needed to meet her baby daughter’s needs and the emotional support that Aminata needed to adjust to life in a new country in the middle of lock down. Aminata told us she saw Children 1st as her “new family” in Scotland.
Aminata’s story has stayed with me for a number of reasons. I was moved by Aminata’s strength and resilience, I was impressed by the quality, skill and care that the Children 1st team showed in their work with her. Most of all, I was deeply struck that she had called her new baby daughter “Hope.”
It shows how important hope is to us, even in the most difficult times. But the start of 2023 is even more challenging for charities, than anything that we saw during the pandemic. Hope alone will not be enough for the children’s sector to support families through the impossible storm of ever greater need, growing costs and a tired workforce who have spent the last few years giving it their all to get children and families through the pandemic.
It’s not an easy time to take on the role of Chair as Children 1st but as Jimmy Paul shared in his recent blog on effective leadership, we are driven by doing what’s right for children and families not what’s easy.
“The purpose of Children 1st is to support families in the here and now, whilst working to prevent harm and hardship coming to families in the first place. This might mean that they no longer exist in the future as they are no longer needed, or it might be that their work takes a different form, and that is what constitutes their success.”
Jimmy Paul, Director of the Wellbeing Economy Alliance Scotland.
Right now, however, it is clear from both the external context and the ever increasing number of families reaching out to Children 1st that there is a greater than ever need for whole family support, access to recovery from trauma and system transformation to prevent harm and hardship coming to children and their families.
As the charity’s new Chair I am determined that Children 1st ensure that the support we offer and the systems change we bring about impacts positively on all families in Scotland in all their diversity. That’s why over the year ahead , we will continue to strengthen our Board so that it becomes ever more increasingly diverse and includes members with an even wider range of life experiences. We will continue to develop our digital offerings so that young families find it easier to access support and we will open Scotland’s first gold standard Bairns Hoose, a place where children get all the support, justice and care they need to recover from trauma and violence under one roof. And we will continue to work with politicians and funders to ensure there is clear political recognition of the value of the children’s sector and a commitment from funders to offer longer cycles of funding to ensure charities can plan sustainable services which meet the needs of all children and families in Scotland.