Year (and a bit) in review: UK Impact at Save the Children

I joined Save the Children UK in May 2020 as their new Director of UK Impact. In that time, I’ve learned a lot. For example, “if you need to home school two primary school age children for most of a year, it is very helpful if you work for a children’s rights charity”. And “it’s really good when an England international footballer who is also universally loved and a wonderful human being chooses to champion the cause your charity cares about”.

Here’s some of the other things during the past year and a bit that we’ve done and I’ve learned during this time.

“If it matters to children, it matters to us”

At the start of what we now call the first Lockdown, Save the Children set up an Emergency Grants programme for families on low incomes. Working with local partners, we offered supermarket and Argos vouchers, to help with the cost of food and basic goods, as well as providing toys and learning packs. We originally intended this programme to last for about six weeks during the lockdown. Eighteen months on, we’ve supported over 16,000 children together with a network of nearly one hundred local partners in communities across the UK.

These grants aren’t just one off transactions. We’ve been listening to the families that we’ve supported to help inform what else is needed to help children and families through these tough times. As one mum in Scotland put it, the whole pandemic has felt for families like “being dropped in a cave”.

Alongside providing practical help directly to families, we’ve therefore been campaigning to tackle child poverty. We supported Marcus Rashford’s campaigns on free school meals, campaigned with allies in Scotland for the introduction of the Scottish Child Payment (such a success that the government introduced it and then doubled it), and were part of the “Keep the Lifeline” coalition to try to prevent the government cutting Universal Credit.

In particular, our focus was on enabling parents affected by these cuts to be able to speak directly to MPs and to opinion formers. Our amazing parent campaigners spoke to Select Committees, were quoted in parliament, appeared on Newsnight, in the Financial Times and across the media.

Earlier this year, we worked with child development experts and play charities to set up the “Summer of Play”. Over 400 organisations came together to pledge their support to make this summer a time of fun, friends and freedom for all children.

The pandemic required us, like everyone else, to stop doing things, to react to unexpected circumstances and try new things. The key principle which has run through all of our work and helped us through these times has been “if it matters to children, it matters to us”.

Imagining a future full of hope and excitement

As we and other charities responded to the immediate impact of the pandemic, it became clear very quickly that there was a key challenge. No one in the senior ranks of the UK government was thinking about children. Not “the government’s policy on children was one we disagreed with”, but literally “none of the key decision-makers seem to be thinking about children’s wellbeing at all”. If you want an example, at one point in Summer 2020, the UK government re-opened the pubs and left the schools closed for nearly all children.

Often those of us who are passionate about particular causes can assume that everyone else cares as much as we do. Or blame individuals for when things go wrong. But the problem here is more fundamental, and isn’t about one single individual or political party. We don’t as a society have a shared sense of what a good childhood is. In Naomi Eisenstadt’s phrase, childhood needs to be about “being, not just becoming”. Education is important to enable children to become productive workers in the future. But it’s equally important for children right here and now to enjoy fun, spend time with their friends, and enjoy all kinds of freedom before they become adults.

Or take the issue of child poverty. To achieve a sustainable reduction in child poverty, we need to build consensus and move beyond debates about whether it is the fault of parents or the government, or a political left vs right issue.

So as well as helping children and families right now, we’ve also been listening and gathering ideas about a better future. We’ve been testing different ways of talking about child poverty which can unite, rather than divide. And we listened to more than 400 children aged 5–11 from across the four nations of the UK about what they think childhood will be like in 30 years time.

Not only were their ideas brilliant, but their approach was inspiring. Children naturally imagine a future full of abundance, sharing, play, nature and excitement. They are aware of the problems in the world today but also the possibilities, hopes and dreams. At a time when so much of the discussion amongst adults feels like it is doom, gloom and decline, having a shared and optimistic vision for how children can thrive is more important than ever.

Work needs to fit in with life, not the other way round

One thing which I experienced from the first day I joined Save the Children was the commitment to wellbeing. As Kevin Watkins, our CEO when I joined, said “there is no trade off between kindness and impact”. During the pandemic, we were all affected in different ways, juggling work and a wide variety of caring commitments, losing loved ones and adjusting to different working patterns which helped some people but were very difficult for others.

I believe one of the biggest contributions which any employer made during the pandemic was how they supported their employees. In a mission-driven organisation such as Save the Children, the challenge was often about how to create a culture in which work fitted in with life and with caring responsibilities, rather than people feeling the pressure to make life fit in with work.

Developing a culture of wellbeing requires a strong focus on equalities, diversity and inclusion. In 2020 we developed our ‘Free to Be Me’ diversity and inclusion strategy, which we are putting into practice in everything from how we recruit staff, how we work together, and how we change how we work and share power and resources with others.

It might sound counter intuitive to spend time telling people it’s ok to miss a work deadline because they need to spend the time with their kids, or to reduce their plans for the next couple of months because some of their team will be on furlough. But my experience is that when work fits in with life, people achieve more. And I think that isn’t just a lesson which applies during global pandemics.

Charity begins at home, so that justice can grow everywhere

There are some people who historically have argued that charities like Save the Children shouldn’t really be working in the UK, and instead should focus all of its efforts in other countries where there is “real poverty”. There are others who argue that “charity begins at home” and “we need to look after our own first”. The polarisation between these two views has arguably done a lot to undermine public support for the UK’s role in international development over the past few years.

What’s been really striking during the pandemic is that a lot of these old arguments have fallen away. No one seriously thinks that there is no need to help children in the UK during lockdowns when schools are closed and families are going hungry. And similarly, the pandemic shows how universal the challenges children are facing — children everywhere are at risk of hunger, of violence, of missing out on learning. It is easier than it has ever been before to have empathy for the struggles which others are experiencing.

Nor does that apply only to Covid-19. When the crisis in Afghanistan hit, we worked in Afghanistan and also with other charities on welcoming refugee families to the UK. As well as working directly with community groups led by Afghan refugees, we’ve also been running training workshops led by colleagues who have been working in Afghanistan for many years to share their knowledge with the frontline workers in the UK who are now supporting refugee families and children. It’s not a choice between either working in the UK or Afghanistan, it’s obviously the right thing to do both.

I work for an organisation which is best known for its work all round the world, but which ever since it was founded over one hundred years ago has been working with children and families in the UK. “Charity begins at home” doesn’t mean “charity ends at home”. It’s about showing how our values and ambitions for all children apply in our own communities just as in our work to help others.

At its best, I believe charity begins at home, brings people together and creates connections, inspires and spreads, so that justice can grow everywhere.

Taking risks so others don’t have to

A few weeks ago, we were trying to come up with an image which summed up what life’s like for many parents. What we came up with was a parent and child walking along a tightrope. Too often, our society is set up so that those who are most harmed by insecurity are those who are most exposed to the risks of things going wrong. That’s what’s run through all of our work during the pandemic — how can we be there for people walking the tightrope, and how can we make sure there is a safety net so no one need fear falling.

People who are going through poverty are exposed to risks and insecurity which those who are more affluent can avoid. In our charity sector, funders and large charities can design ways of allocating funding and contracting to protect themselves, and offload risks to smaller charities. And employers can minimise their obligations and leave their employees to fend for themselves.

This approach doesn’t really work at any time, but it certainly doesn’t work during a pandemic. So we’ve been trying to work in a very different way.

By the summer of 2020, it was clear that there was a need for emergency support for families long beyond the first lockdown. Rather than waiting til we knew how much funding we could raise and then distributing it, we guaranteed to distribute at least £2 million between then and Christmas, and accepted the risk that we hadn’t yet secured that amount of funding. That meant we could start getting grants to families far more quickly. It’s risky for a charity to start committing money in this way in such an uncertain fundraising environment. But it is even more risky to let children go hungry. And, sure enough, we were able to meet and exceed our funding targets, thanks in part to the extraordinary generosity of Daily Mirror readers and many other amazing supporters.

Or to take another example, we’d decided a couple of years ago to end our involvement in local community partnerships in Wallsend and Smallshaw-Hurst by the end of 2020. But then the pandemic hit. Was it really right to walk away from those partnerships, leave local community organisations to have to find the resources to co-ordinate their efforts and help children? We didn’t think so, and extended our support and committed to raise further funding for another two years to give time for a sustainable community-led approach to be embedded.

As my colleague Michelle says, many people “just needed patience, support, kindness and a safety net to hold me through the worst time of my life,” and to have someone on their side who can say “your best is good enough — be kind to yourself!”

What’s next?

I’m writing this on Christmas Jumper Day. If you are already taking part in this special day, thank you, and if you are able to sign up and get involved, we really appreciate it.

I’ve been meaning to write up what life’s been like at Save the Children for some time. The main thing that has been stopping me is the fear of missing out the brilliant work that my colleagues have been doing. I haven’t even talked about the Community Research nursery we helped set up in Sheffield, our work with Lego in Margate, what we’ve been up to in Bettws and East Belfast, the work of some of our amazing partners from ACE to Reach and so many more, our research and evidence on changing systems and helping parents to support their children’s learning…

And this is just one of the countries where Save the Children works, let what we do in other countries. But this particular piece is quite long enough already.

As we look to 2022, we’ll be putting all those things we learned during the pandemic into practice. We’ll make sure we put what matters to children, young people and families at the heart of all we do; develop partnerships based on shared vision and values, sharing our resources and networks with others; and making sure the evidence and insights about what’s needed to give children the best start in life and reduce poverty reaches decision-makers and inspires them to act. If you’d like to hear any more about any of this, I’d love to hear from you.