Jeremy's Blog

Youth unemployment

2012-01-19T07:17:00.000Z

Yesterdaythe number of young people officially unemployed reached 1 millionout of a total of 6 million. A report by theJoseph RowntreeFoundation "Monitoring Poverty and Social Exclusion 2011"published in December notes the number of people in part-time workwho want full-time jobs has doubled since 2004. This massive increasehighlights that the problem is lack of jobs not unwillingness to lookfor work.

In1897 the year of Queen Victoria's Diamod Jubilee the founders ofChildren North East started to offer training for boys to help themsecure mong term employment. They recognised that the problem ofstreet children could only be solved through work.

Inthis Diamond Jubilee year Children North East is offering trainingand work experience to a few young people in our Community Cafe atWEYES. We have just advertised our first apprenticeship at HeadOffice and we expect to increase the number of placements for socialwork and youth work students from 4 to 9 during the year.

Our3 Youth Link volunteer schemes give young people the chance to gainexperience and qualifications. We also offer training courses insexaul health, mental health and wellbeing for young people whichlead to qualifications.

Ina small way Children North East is doing what it can to address thescandal of so many unemployed young people.

The January Declaration

2012-01-13T07:23:00.000Z

Thisweek The Journal published the "January Declaration" signedby 26 local leaders (including me) in which we committo stop blaming the poor and work to reduce inequalities.

Yesterdayour trustees and managers came together to discuss how Children NorthEast should respond to the issues raised by children and young peoplein our photography project and conference last year.

Weintend to go back to the groups who took part and engage each inplanning how and where the photographs will be shown where theylive. We want to invite parents, schools, local businesses, housingorganisations, the police, local voluntary groups and localcouncillors to the events to talk about the issues in their area andwhat they want to do about it. Then we will work with them to makethose changes.

Wealso want to go back to our roots and ensure every child and youngpeople has at least one day trip during the summer holiday and createopportunities for families to have a holiday during the year. We haveexciting ideas how that could be done.

Iam very pleased that Children North East is committed to playing apart in improving the lives of so many more children and young peoplein our region in new and imaginative ways.

Generosity and kindnesses

2011-12-22T10:00:00.000Z

Every Christmas we receive thousands of gifts of toys and games for children and young people, and donations of food and money for parents struggling to make a good Christmas for their families. They come from staff in businesses, well meaning individuals, radio appeals who then pass on gifts to us to distribute. A few children came with their parents bringing gifts to our head office.

This year we encouraged people to consider gifts that will brighten a child's life and be a vivid memory for months to come - tickets for ice skating, visits to Santa, the pantomime and the Christmas film releases. We know that poorer children and young people miss out on these experiences in particular and a great many people and businesses have given generously, some including extra cash for hot chocolate drinks, ice cream and treats on the trips out.

You might have thought there would be fewer gifts and donations this year in hard times but not a bit of it. We have received more gifts than ever before plus all the generous trips out as well. Our project and office staff have all rolled up their sleeves to sort and distribute everything in time for Christmas - it has been quite a job but lots of fun too.

This is the season of goodwill and I am an optimist but can I detect a slight change in public opinion? Is it possible that people are thinking we are 'all in this together' and paying a little more attention to each other? Could it be that not being able to afford to spend, means money and spending are slightly less important to us all? Maybe it is even possible that how much a person has might become less important than the kindnesses we show each other? I wonder what 2012 will bring? Happy Christmas!

120,000 'Troubled Families'

2011-12-16T16:50:00.000Z

David Cameron has announced a network of 'caseworkers' and £400 million (from existing grants to local government) to coordinate services to 120,000 so called 'troubled families'. This is part of the government's response to the riots last summer and what David Cameron calls the 'responsibility deficit' whereby people are apparently disconnected from community and family.

This initiative is not new, it is a reworking of the 'Family Intervention Programmes' piloted by New Labour. Some of the 'FIPs' were targeted at families engaged in anti-social behaviour and some at families living in poverty. FIPs recognised that most of these families already have a plethora of professionals involved with them but their combined efforts are not coordinated. The FIP workers not only engage with the whole family but also the professional network. FIPs have been effective but they are very time intensive and there are families who refuse to take part.

David Cameron appointed Louise Casey, a civil servant who was policy adviser on Anti-Social Behaviour to New Labour, to lead on this new approach to families. However in the new scheme the 'caseworkers' will not work directly with the families, instead they will coordinate the professionals currently working with them. At the press conference announcing the initiative Louise Casey pointed out "The typical profile of a rioter is 35% out of work or on benefits, 42% on free school meals, 66 % with special educational needs, only 11% with five plus GCSEs, and 70% living in the 30% most deprived post codes, and 36% excluded from schools."

Out of work, free school meals, deprived neighbourhoods describes poverty not poor parenting. Students with unmet special educational needs are unlikely to do well at school, more likely to become frustrated at schools and are therefore more likely to be excluded. That is a problem with the educational system, although parental interest in and support for education is certainly very important in success at school.

Louise Casey quoted an opinion poll saying "86% of the population thinks that the riots were caused by bad parenting."

So here we have policy lead by opinion poll which lets the government off the hook of dealing with the real problems of lack of jobs and rising poverty. The approach is based on existing good practice but watered down because caseworkers will not be working directly with families. Money for the intiative will be diverted from other necessary local goverment services for children, young people and families. Coordination is important but any family worker, counsellor, therapist or youth worker will tell you what actually works, what makes a difference is not the system, or the model or the theory but the relationship with the family, client, service user, young person.

What do you think about child poverty?

2011-12-08T11:00:00.000Z

Yesterday the National Centre for Social Research published the British Social Attitudes survey for 2011. One section is about child poverty. 43% of people agree with the statement that there is some child poverty in Britain and 36% think there is quite a lot. That's 79%, a clear majority agreeing that child poverty exists in Britian today. I find that encouraging beacuse we had assumed that most people thought child poverty was something that existed in third world countries, not in the UK. Furthermore the survey found 51% think that child poverty will increase in Britain during the next decade.

The survey also asked people about the causes of child poverty. 75% thought the reason is due to drug and alcohol problems of parents; 63% think it is that parents do not want to work; 56% blame family breakdown; 51% put it down to lack of parents education; and 50% think the cause is long term unemployment. Undoubtedly these are all possible difficulties that families may experience but in the experience of Children North East and the academics who spoke at our conference overwhelmingly child poverty is a 'structural' problem caused by there not being enough well-paid jobs to go round.

82% of people surveyed consider it very important to reduce child poverty in Britain while 16% think it is quite important, that is pretty much everyone. However 79% think central government should be responsible for reducing child poverty but 46% say responsibility for ending child poverty rests with parents and 32% say relatives should be responsible.

Questions about child poverty have been asked in the surveysince 1986. Much was made in the press yesterday that this year's survey showed a hardening of attitudes towards the poor. In fact successive surveys show that attitudes are not consistently moving in one or other direction. There is speculation in the survey report that attitudes to poverty may vary according to the prevailing economic circumstances. When times are hard, people think that the poorer members of society are likely to be even more worse off.

Dissing the North East?

2011-12-01T09:30:00.000Z

We have received some adverse comment about the children's photographs depicting poverty in the North East. A few people think they display a negative image of the North East.

This rather misses the point. The pictures were taken by children and young people to illustrate their experiences of their lives and where they live. The fact there are no pictures that tell of the great cities, history, sport and culture of the North East and very few of the beautiful countryside and coastline, demonstrates how excluded the children and young people are from all those things. Poverty excludes you from the expeiences and opportunities that everyone seems to take for granted, it makes you feel those things are not for you.

On 23rd November, the night before our child poverty conference, the BBC hosted a viewing of the documentary 'Poor Kids' before an invited audience at the Tyneside Cinema. The film interviews and shows the lives of 3 children living in Leicester, Bradford and Glasgow. The issues shown are exactly the same as those we found among children and young people all over the North East.

Another comment about the photographs was posted on our website and said, 'Reminds me of my childhood in the 70s in the East Midlands. You would have hoped things would have got better.'

Far from the photographs being isolated and negative portayals of the North East, they probably reflect the everyday experiences of poor children and young people in all parts of the country. They remind me of houses, places and experiences of children and young people I have worked with in London and the North East for 36 years. What poverty looks like does not seem to change much.

Child Poverty, Definately Not a Thing of the Past

2011-11-24T08:00:00.000Z

Jonathan Miles devoted his morning show on BBC Radio Newcastle yesterday to child poverty and our conference "Child Poverty, Definately Not a Thing of the Past" at the Sage, Gateshead. One elderly lady heard it and made her way to the Sage to see for herself some of the 11,000 photographs depicting child poverty taken by north east children and young people last summer.

She told us when she heard on the radio that poor children and young people could not get to the seaside because the bus fares are too expensive, she thought of her free bus pass and felt sick at her good fortune when so many children and young people never go anywhere unless they can walk it.

Earlier this week one of our supporters phoned Children North East bitterly disappointed with our Christmas appeal. She felt it wrong that donations would support children of parents living on benefits. In her opinion these families do not deserve charity.

Public opinion about poverty is very polarised. Even if you chose to ignore government figures that 24% (132,000 0 to 19 year olds) in the north east are living below the official poverty line; or you chose to ignore 11,000 images of poverty taken by over 500 children and young people this summer of every part of our region; many people still chose to blame the poor.

Professor Tracy Shildrick of Teesside University told the conference her research in Middlesbrough over 12 years found virtually no evidence of the so-called 'multigenerational' workless families who make a 'lifestyle choice' to live on benefits. Instead she consistently found parents who wanted to work but in the absence of well paid, sustainable jobs found themselves constantly moving in and out of short term poorly paid jobs with spells on benefits in between.

The conference generated over 100 actions for participants, organisations working together and messages for government. Top message was to stop blaming the poor, instead shame the overpaid and the tax dodgers into contributing to the common good.

Children North East is determined to build on the success of our conference to do all we can to ensure Child Poverty becomes a thing of the past.

Children's experiences of poverty - 11,000 images

2011-11-23T07:30:00.000Z

Last summer Children North East invited 1,200 children and young people, 100 in each North East Local Authority, to photograph their lives and what poverty looked like where they live.

There have been projects before that record images of poverty in the north east. However we do not think anything on this scale has been done before, the children and young people produced over 11,000 photographs.

Many people do not believe poverty exists in the UK today. This project gives the lie to that. It is impossible to ignore so many images, impossible to pretend poverty only affects a minority in a few places. Child poverty affects neighbourhoods in every part of our region - Northumberland, Tyneside, Wearside, County Durham, Teesside and Darlington.

It is a scandal that poverty on this scale should exist today in the 6th wealthiest country in the world. The children and young people who photographed their lives demand our attention. So what are we going to do about it?

The photographs from the project will be the central focus of a national conference about child poverty at the Sage, Gateshead on 23rd November hosted by Children North East and the Webb Memorial Trust. The aim of the conference is to generate personal and regional actions, and demands to government for action that together will end child poverty.

The project was funded by the Webb Memorial Trust and managed by Children North East. The purpose of the project is to bring children and young people’s experiences to the regional debate about what should be done for the 144,000 children (1 in 4) living in families below the official poverty line in the North East.

Children's experiences of poverty - Hopes

2011-11-22T08:30:00.000Z

We asked each group if they wanted to live in the same neighbourhood when they grew up. Almost all of them said no.

Many of the children and young people had aspirations - to go to university, to travel and live abroad, to own luxury cars, but they felt they could never attain them.

Children's experiences of poverty - Anti Social Behaviour

2011-11-21T08:30:00.000Z

We asked each group to tell us about their pictures and what they meant to them and group them into themes.

The children and young people spoke about racism and bullies. Many objected to smoking but some talked about being smokers themselves. Among the photographs were some of substance misuse too.

Chidlren's experiences of poverty - Shops

2011-11-20T08:30:00.000Z

We asked each group to tell us about their pictures and what they meant to them and group them into themes.

The children and young people took many photographs of shopping streets where many shops were closed down. They spoke about too many tanning salons, cheap booze and take-away food shops but a lack of fresh food shops.

Children's experiences of poverty - Food

2011-11-19T08:30:00.000Z

We asked each group to tell us about their pictures and what they meant to them and group them into themes.

Children and Young People understand the importance of healthy eating but fresh foodwas hard to obtain and expensive compared to processed food.

Children's experiences of poverty - Love

2011-11-18T08:30:00.000Z

We asked each group to tell us about their pictures and what they meant to them and group them into themes.

Love - family, friends and pets, and animals for those living in very rural areas were very important to all the children and young people.

Children's experiences of poverty - Holidays

2011-11-17T08:30:00.000Z

We asked each group to tell us about their pictures and what they meant to them and group them into themes.

Very few of the children and young people went away on holiday.

Most families could not afford a week away on holiday. Chidlren and young people told us that school trips (even day trips) were too expensive for them. Some enjoyed free day trips organised by local community projects or Children's Centres.

Children's experiences of poverty - Money

2011-11-16T08:30:00.000Z

We asked each group to tell us about their pictures and what they meant to them and group them into themes.

Lack of money was a regular theme among the children and young people.

It is rare to see children on the streets without shoes these days but no one knows how many children and young people are wearing ill-fitting hand-me-down shoes. Many children and young people thought a win on a scratchcard was potentially a quick way to increase income. “Money, it’s a big problem, if you don’t havemoney you can’t do anything”

Children's experiences of poverty - Transport

2011-11-15T08:30:00.000Z

We asked each group to tell us about their pictures and what they meant to them and group them into themes.

Children and young people spent a lot of time out of the house, but the cost or lack of public transport prevented them from leaving their immediate neighbourhood.

Children and young people said public transport was either too expensive to use or did not exist. They did not go anywhere unless they could walk there.

BBC Inside Out North East

2011-11-14T22:24:00.001Z

BBC North East presenter Chris Jackson's report about Children North East's 120 year history working with poor children was broadcast this evening (see iplayer: http://bbc.in/twtiBU - third item about 20 minutes in). He told the story of the organisation's origins working with street children through to setting up the first children's TB sanatorium in the country at Stannington near Morpeth, Northumberland. He interviewed people who movingly recalled having been treated there as children. Then right up to date with brief insights into our work today with children, families and young people. Thank you Chris, you have made a great programme. Thank you too to the staff and service users who took part.

Children's experiences of poverty - Open Spaces

2011-11-14T08:30:00.000Z

We asked each group to tell us about their pictures and what they meant to them and group them into themes.

Children and young people spent a lot of time out of the house, where they could walk to them, they enjoyed open spaces like the beach and countryside.

The children and young people could not afford public transport so could only get to the beach or countryside if they were within walking distance of home. A great many children and young people had nowhere to go other than their neighbourhood.

Children's experiences of poverty - Playgrounds

2011-11-13T09:00:00.000Z

We asked each group to tell us about their pictures and what they meant to them and group them into themes.

Children and young people spent a lot of time out of the house, play grounds were mentioned very often.

Young people hung out in children’s playgrounds because there was nowhere else to go; children did not use playgrounds because they were afraid of the young people or the equipment was unpleasant or damaged.

Children's experiences of poverty - Environment

2011-11-12T09:30:00.000Z

We asked each group to tell us about their pictures and what they meant to them and group them into themes.

The second most often mentioned theme was the local environment.

Children and young people did not like living in places where no one wanted to live, places that were dirty, untidy, run down. They said graffiti and rubbish made a place untidy. Many played in derelict places because adults left them alone when they were there.

Children's experiences of poverty - Housing

2011-11-11T09:00:00.000Z

We asked each group to tell us about their pictures and what they meant to them and group them into themes.

There were more photographs about housing than any other theme.

The children and young people said their homes had thin walls so you could hear what was going on next door. Their homes were small and many had to share a bedroom with siblings or parents. Most of them felt too embarrassed to invite friends back home, so they spent much of their time outdoors.

Innocent until proven guilty?

2011-11-10T10:47:00.000Z

The Unversal Declaration of Human Rights article 11 says: 'Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty according to law.' This story is about a family with 6 children who are not able to claim any welfare benefits because they are being investigated for possible benefit fraud. Does it make it worse that they have not been charged with an offence; is that outside the provision of article 11?

The family were part of a whole community under investigation for benefit fraud in another UK city. This left the family without income so they moved to Newcastle where they had connections. They rented from a private landlord, the father got a job in a car wash, the mother a job cleaning hotel rooms. The 6 children started in local schools.

All seemed fine until the the landlord evicted them (illegally) and the father lost his job (his employer was friends with the landlord). At that point the council admitted them into temporary accommodation for homeless people which is where Children North East met them.

We run a creche for pre-school children and an out of school club for older children who are living in temporary accommodation. We also work with the parents to help them move on into new tenancies - temporary accommodation is not a great place for children.

Then the mother also lost her job after 3 months - one might guess so that the employer could avoid responsibility for the mother's statutory employment rights like entitlement to paid leave. Now the family have no income at all.

The younger children's school is 3 miles from the temporary accommodation. They walk to and from school, the youngest (who is just 5 and in reception year) is pushed in a buggy.

The eldest boy's school is also some distance. He has an under 16 bus pass which entitles him to reduced fares but still needs £1 a journey, so now he doesn't get there very often.

The family cannot pay rent for their temporary accommodation. They have no food unless our staff give them unused food from the creche.

Children North East does not judge, our view is no matter whatever is going on with the parents, it is never the children's fault. I think most people would agree the children do not deserve to suffer. But what are parents and we supposed to do in circumstances which are simply unjust?

'Feral' children?

2011-11-03T18:19:00.001Z

Today Barnardos published a survey of 2,000 adults about their opinions of children and young people. 44% agreed with a statement that some young people are 'becoming feral'; 47% think young people are angry, violent and abusive; and 1 in 4 people believe children are beyond help by the age of 10. The survey echoes findings of a similar one conducted a few years ago, also by Barnardos. Sir Al Aynesley-Green, the former Children's Commissioner for England said on BBC Radio 4 that as a country we don't like children much.

This word 'feral' is interesting. Historically it has meant abandoned children, for example growing up in the forest, sometimes brought up by animals. People have been fascinated by them to try to discover which human abilities are 'innate' and which are learned from human contact. More recently feral children are street children like those Children North East was founded to work with 120 years ago. Jamal Malik, the hero of 'Slumdog Millionaire' is a 'feral' child. In literature two famous 'feral' children are Peter Pan and Mowgli, the appeal of both is their 'natural' state - innocence and daring, unimpeded by the demands of ordinary life, especially adult life.

The English have a complicated relationship with childhood. On the one hand we love the innocence of it and the hanker for the beauty and energy of youth (as exemplified by fashion models and footballers); but on the other hand we are terrified that unless 'controlled' they will become lawless and violent. We tend to regard them as 'other', nothing to do with us, society or possibly even the human race.

In reality children and young people are 'junior citizens' as much as elderly people are senior citizens. We don't expect either to be economically productive, so why treat them differently? Senior Citizens are still entitled to vote, children and young people have no political or spending power of their own; therefore they actually deserve more care by society not less. Think about it - a big part of the economy (adult's jobs) depends on children and young people - their health and education; how much families spend on their clothing, food, toys and activities. And over half of all young people do some form of voluntary work, a far bigger proportion than any other age group - they are the backbone of the so-called 'Big Society'

So let's get over this peculiar English obsession with the so called 'savagery' of children and start valuing them for who they are and the contribution they make, after all they are our future.

What we know about the rioters now

2011-10-27T09:26:00.001+01:00

Back in August when there were riots in some of our major cities I wrote it was too soon to debate what the causes might be, we needed a period of time to pass before taking a long, calm look at the causes. This week the Ministry of Justice published comprehensive statistics about the background of the rioters:

More than 2,500 businesses and 230 homes were damaged or burgled during the riots
90% of those brought to court were male and one half were under 21
42% were white; and only 13% of all those brought to court were gang members
35% of the adults (age 18 or over) were claiming out of work benefits (the national average is 12%)
80% of the adults and 62% of the juveniles had a previous conviction
42% of the young people (i.e. under 18) were in receipt of free school meals (the commonly used indicator of coming from a poor background) compared to the national average of 16%
Two thirds of the young people had some form of special educational need compared to the national average of 21%
Over one third of the young people had been temporarily excluded from school compared to a national average of 6% and more than one in ten had been expelled from school, compared to a national average of 0.1%

It is well known that dyslexia (difficulty reading) is very over-represented in the prison population - some estimates say as many as two thirds of all prisoners cannot read. This may well be one of the 'special educational needs' that young people brought to court have.

Imagine going to school each day and not being able to read. In primary school you may find plenty of other things to motivate you but the ability to read becomes crucial in secondary school. Most Year 7 (the first year of secondary school when children are 11) text books require a reading age of about 13 years. Even 11 year olds who are good readers will be challenged a little, imagine what it is like if your reading age is much lower.

So you find yourself increasingly unable to engage in secondary school education, its not surprising you might ask yourself about the point of school and decide it's not for you. But you have no choice - you have to be there day after day in an environment where you cannot succeed. You might kick against it, you might give up - either way you will end up in trouble. It's not hard to see how that might end up in the school excluding you. Then what do you do with your time? The state has a duty to provide a minimum education to you usually through an individual tutor, but the rest of the time is your own. Chances are you will be hanging around on the streets where, who knows, you might fall into bad company.

Of course there is no inevitability between difficulty reading and eventual criminality. Primary school children who are struggling to learn to read require extra help as soon as possible to overcome the difficulty. That is why Children North East encourages parents to introduce their children to books and read to them well before they start school. It is also why we are setting up a scheme for secondary school students to help primary school children to read.

Cutting off children

2011-10-20T08:56:00.000+01:00

This week the National Children's Bureau (NCB), a well respected independent research, policy and lobby group, published a report which concludes that children are bearing the brunt of the recession and austerity measures. Local Authorities have cut services for children and young people such as play, youth work and support for disabled children disproportionately compared to services for adults. And the recession, rising prices and cuts in tax breaks for families mean that children are becoming poorer.

NCB’s chief executive Dr Hilary Emery said, ‘Not only are their services being cut, but their home-life is becoming increasingly more stressful as parents worry about employment and the cost of food and fuel. We know families under stress can lead to an increase in domestic violence, child abuse, mental health problems, drug abuse and alcoholism - all of which have a greater long-term cost to the UK taxpayer.’

Last Saturday Caitlin Moran wrote a powerful piece in The Times magazine describing exactly what it feels like to be poor, to be broke for months and years on end. Only ever having enough to just scrape by day by day; hoping no unexpected expense crops up; then going without and never feeling you can make a change for the better. It makes you feel like you don't exist.

Our photography project is nearing completion. The biggest issues for the children and young people are poor housing and derelict neighbourhoods, they have taken thousands of pictures of boarded up houses, rubble and rubbish. Poor children don't go anywhere unless it is free and within walking distance. Most spent the whole summer on their estate. If there is nowhere for them, the young people hang out in children's playgrounds where adults don't bother them. So the younger ones stay clear of the playgrounds and play on derelict land out of the way.

It is simply not fair to invest less in play and activities for young people at this moment. They need safe places to go to socialise and play outside their home. They deserve to be treated as citizens, valued members of the community not simply ignored.

Gloom

2011-10-13T09:29:00.004+01:00

This week on Tuesday the Institute of Fiscal Studies published its latest report. The BBC picked up their forecast that 600,000 more children are likely to fall into poverty in the next 2 years. The IFS published a similar report in October last year in which the forecast was 300,000 more children were likely to fall into poverty. The forecast has doubled in a year.

Yesterday the unemployment figures were published. Unemployment is now higher than any time since 1994. In the last 3 months the sharpest rise has been in the North East to 11.7%. More part time jobs have been lost than full time ones. There are now 991,000 16 to 24 year olds without jobs, a national disgrace.

Last night I went to a Newcastle City Council public meeting to discuss the impact the Welfare Reform Bill will have on people in the city. The Bill sets out a simplified benefits system, which is welcomed by campaigners, but at the same time reduces many present entitlements. For example restrictions and 'caps' on Housing Benefit is likely to mean families needing to move to smaller or cheaper properties with lower rents, but the stock of properties is limited in Newcastle; so we could see more people falling behind on paying rent, more hardship and possible homelessness. This is on top of changes to Tax Credits which makes child care relatively more expensive, increased food and fuel prices for working families.

From December this year lone parents will no longer be entitled to Income Support once their youngest child reaches their 5th birthday. They will be forced into work - but where are the jobs, especially part-time ones so that lone parents can fit work around school times?

This morning Shelter published research that private rented houses are now 'unaffordable' for families on average incomes in 55% of local authorities. Shelter found rents had risen at one-and-a-half times the rate of incomes in the 10 years up to 2007.

On a positive note, this week Children North East has a new member of staff whose job is to help us create opportunities for young people in the organisation as volunteers, apprentices and work experience. A small contribution to give young people a sense of purpose, and to feel less excluded.

Children and Young People Now Awards shortlist

2011-10-06T08:57:00.000+01:00

I am delighted that Children North East has been shortlisted in two categories of the prestigious Children and Young People Now magazine awards.

The Children and Young People Now awards are in their 6th year. They share and celebrate the best practice in the UK of all those working to improve the lives of children, young people and families. Out of hundreds of entries, the judges have shortlisted the ones that represent the best work with children, young people and families from all over the country.

Our West End Youth Enquiry Service (WEYES) is one of 5 projects shortlisted in the Youth Work category; and our Families Plus Hidden Harm service is one of 5 projects shortlisted for the Parenting award.

I am particularly pleased that Children North East has been shortlisted for two awards. This places us on a par with the big national children's charities - only Barnardos and Action for Children have, like us, been shortlisted more than once this year.

The winners will be announced at an award ceremony in London on 17th November. It would be wonderful to win but even if we don't it is a huge achievement and enormous credit to our staff who work at WEYES and in our Hidden Harm service - it proves they are as good as anyone else in the country!

The full list of the projects shortlisted are on the Children and Young People Now website: www.cypnow.co.uk

Is parenting really about control?

2011-09-29T17:44:00.000+01:00

The day before the new school year started I spent a day with one of our Families Plus workers visiting families in their homes.

Our first stop was to go with a Mam and her 6 year old son to buy a new sweat shirt for school. We walked from their flat across several busy streets and up the hill to school. The lad, let's call him John, was full of energy, excited to be out, he wanted to run and his Mam had to keep warning him to watch out for traffic and be careful crossing the roads. When we got to school he rushed into reception heading for the toilet, the receptionist called out, you can't go through "because of insurance" as if a 6 year odl would know what that meant. He was busting so she let him into school explaining she had to accompany him because if he hurt himself the school would be to blame.

It took a little time to buy and pay for the sweat shirt (from a grant Children North East had obtained), in the meantime John wanted to run into the playground and play on the climbing frame. The receptionist told him he was not allowed "because of health and safety". She explained he might fall, hurt himself and then the school would be to blame. She said it was OK during term time when there were lots of people about but she could not take the risk in the school holiday. John's Mam meekly complied with the school rules too.

We visited two other families that day. In each home I was struck by how anxious the parents were to ensure their children and young people were 'under control' - that they were well behaved and not causing any trouble to anyone. Of course setting and maintaining boundaries is part of good parenting, children need to know right from wrong, but my colleague told me it was quite usual for parents to be constantly fussing as if the mark of a good parent was how well you controlled your children.

John told us the highlight of the whole 6 week holiday was going to a football match (again organised by Children North East) with his Dad - he had never been to a match before and it was really exciting. Apart from a couple of trips swimming with his Mam and one to the cinema he had spent most of the 6 week holiday indoors, safe from the streets and the traffic.

After so long indoors would it really have been so bad for John to run about and climb in an empty school playground? Wouldn't we have enjoyed watching him exploring the world and yes, maybe he might fall over? And even if he did isn't it more likely his Mam would have picked him up and comforted him than sue the school? And wouldn't she have felt better to allow him to do all that too?

Homelessness and the Great North Run

2011-09-22T09:39:00.000+01:00

The Cyrenians is a North East charity working with homeless people. This week they published research commissioned from Northumbria University about how adults become homeless. They trained homeless people to interview 82 other homeless people about their experiences.

It seems there are two distinct routes into homelessness, 'lifelong' and a 'life events' pathways. The former pathway is about disadvantage all through life - 24% had difficulties reading and writing at school; 24% were bullied at school; 25% had been in care as children or adolescents. Parental addictions, domestic violence and traumatic experiences in childhood, especially ones involving violence all figure heavily in the recollections of these homeless adults.

The 'life events' pathway is more about adults who have good childhood experiences but run into crises as adults. For example 80% had had their own home at some point; 70% had experienced financial problems such as being unable to pay bills; 65% had been in a long term relationship and 50% had children. However the majority had a problem with drugs and half a problem with alcohol. The common story was of alcohol or drug misuse triggered by financial difficulties ending with loss of job, relationship and home.

Most of us have several social networks for example family, friends, work colleagues, social contacts e.g. sports club or team, former friends (e.g. people we knew at school and keep in touch with) who would help us if we needed help. Typically homeless adults have lost all their social networks, they are entirely alone. Perhaps none more so than young people leaving care who frequently have no network at all.

So more reaons why Children North East support for children, young people and families is necessary to improve childhood experiences, prevent family breakdown and contrbute to preventing homelessness.

Great North Run

Huge thanks to the 40 runners who raised money for Children North East by running the Great North Run last Sunday. We welcomed finishers with cups of tea, chocolate bars and heartfelt congratulations. Every year I am overwhelmed by anyone's ability to run 13 miles - some looked as though they had just had a brisk walk to post a letter, though others were clearly suffering. I am personally grateful to every single one of you.

Dad's are biologically programmed to care

2011-09-15T14:42:00.001+01:00

There was news this week of a study conducted by the National Academy of Sciences who followed 624 young men before and after they became fathers. The study found that as soon as a man bcame a father, his testosterone levels dropped substantially. Men with newborn babies less than a month old had especially reduced levels of testosterone. Larger falls were also seen in men who were more involved in childcare.

Christopher Kuzawa, lead investigator of the work, which was carried out in the Philippines said: "Raising human offspring is such an effort that it is co-operative by necessity, and our study shows that human fathers are biologically wired to help with the job."

"Fatherhood and the demands of having a newborn baby require many emotional, psychological and physical adjustments. Our study indicates that a man's biology can change substantially to help meet those demands."

The researchers think that lower testosterone levels might also protect against certain chronic diseases, which might help explain why married men and fathers often enjoy better health than single men of the same age.

Testosterone is the hormone which makes men go out and find a mate, often competing to do so.Professor Ashley Grossman, spokesman for the Society for Endocrinology, said: "this shows the hormonal and behavioural trade-off between mating and parenting, one requiring a high and the other a low testosterone level."

Dr Allan Pacey, senior lecturer in andrology at the University of Sheffield, said: "The observations could make some evolutionary sense if we accept the idea that men with lower testosterone levels are more likely to be monogamous with their partner and care for children. However, it would be important to check that link between testosterone levels and behaviour before we could be certain."

Children North East publishes a series of guides for Dads for sale from our Father's Plus website, look out for the latest one about Dads and Midwives.

To work or not to work?

2011-09-08T11:42:00.000+01:00

This week the Daycare Trust and Save the Children reported the high cost of childcare especially for poorer families. We can all agree that the route out of poverty is jobs but poorer families are finding it is no longer worth their while staying in work because the cost of childcare can swallow up between a quarter to one half of all their income. And things will get even worse in 2013 when government reimbursement for childcare costs falls from 80% to 70%.

Also National Energy Action published data on fuel poverty this week. A household is deemed to be in fuel poverty if they spend more than 10% of their income on gas and electricity. In 2007 13.2% of all English households were in fuel poverty, that has now risen to 23%. But things are far worse in the North East. Here 18.6% of households were in fuel poverty in 2007, now the figure is 33% - that's one in three households.

According to Save the Children 1.6 million children in the UK are living in severe poverty, that is families whose income is less than £12,000 a year. The reality of life for those families is they may not be able to afford a hot meal every evening, or to heat their home adequately all the time and children may have to go without a warm coat in the winter. 40% of parents in this group are thinking about giving up work. Faced with rising childcare as well as rising food prices and energy costs, they reckon they would be better off living on benefits.

That is not what the Coalition Government wants to hear. Their welfare policy is to put pressure on everyone to be in work and they still have a target inherited from New Labour to end child poverty by 2020. People could find themselves compelled to work but for less and less return. Is that really what we want?

Why services provided by volunteers are not free

2011-09-01T14:28:00.003+01:00

Recently I spent a couple of days out and about with our Youth Link Coordinators. I wanted to know first hand about their day to day work with volunteers and young people. I accompanied them to 'Team Around the Child' meetings of professionals involved with a young person and their parents; visits to young people with their parents to set up work with one of our volunteers and a meeting with a young person and their parents to review the time the volunteer had spent with them.

Children North East has three 'Youth Link' projects in Sedgefield, Tynedale and Blyth. The projects recruit and train young people as volunteers to mentor and befriend other young people in need who are generally referred by statutory services (schools, mental health, children's services etc.).

The Youth Link Coordinator visits young people who have been referred to explain what Youth Link is and discuss the things they would like help with from a volunteer. This meeting will usually be with the parents who must give consent to having a volunteer working with their daughter or son. Then the Coordinator 'matches' the young person to a volunteer taking account of interests, abilities and availability. Matching also means explaining the young person's needs to the volunteer and getting their agreement to the 'match'.

Next the Youth Link Coordinator, volunteer, young person and their parent(s) meet to introduce each other and agree how the work will take place - goals, meeting times and places, transport etc. Only then does the volunteer start to work with the young person.

Volunteers give a few hours a week so can only realistically work with one young person at a time. They also have a meeting with the Youth Link Coordinator about once a month to discuss how the work is going and draw on the Coordinator's knowledge, experience and insight to help the process along.

Sometimes other people are also involved with the young person or their family at the same time as the volunteer. When that happens those people will usually meet regularly in 'Team Around the Child' or 'Team Around the Family' meetings to coodinate what each is doing. The Youth Link Coordinators attend these meetings (which happen during normal office hours) on behalf of the volunteer (who usually is at work or college).

Youth Link Coordinators review the work between the young person and volunteer every few months and also at the end of the work. This is done to make sure progress is being made towards the goals the young person wants to achieve and that all involved are satisfied with the arrangements. The volunteer can learn from these reviews to discuss in private later with the Youth Link Coordinator, for example what sorts of young people they enjoy working with and what extra training would help them.

Currently there are 96 young people who are volunteers in our Youth Link projects. This is just a flavour of what the Youth Link Coordinator's do to ensure that the service the volunteers provide is effective and a beneficial experience for the young people, parents and volunteers. The Coordinators also recruit and train volunteers to an accredited standard and promote the service to potential referers. Each is a qualified youth worker and all are employed full-time.

Looters

2011-08-12T00:00:00.003+01:00

Fortunately we have not seen lawlessness and looting in North East cities and towns this last few days. The TV pictures from London, Manchester and the West Midlands are appalling. Adults and children who commit crime should be brought to justice and held responsible for their actions.

There is a danger that seeking to understand why these events have happened can be misunderstood as condoning them. It may be too soon to clearly and calmly investigate the causes - a well conducted public enquiry is certainly called for.

David Cameron is suggesting that responsibility rests with the individuals involved and their parents. Personal responsibility is certainly crucial however the government cannot shirk its responsibility. Just as it is morally right for individuals to be responsible for their own behaviour there is also a moral responsibility for government to look after the interests of everyone in the country.

The previous government was concerned about a growing 'underclass' of individuals and families who had little stake in the norms held by the rest of society. They called it 'social exclusion' and introduced a raft of initiatives to try to address it. By contrast the Coalition Government has chosen to emphasise what is 'fair' for the majority, its policies seek to coerce the 'undeserving' into conformity.

Social exclusion and David Cameron's 'broken society' both point to the same phenomenon which is the huge and growing gap between the richest and the poorest people in the country. More equal western societies tend to be more at ease with themselves and to experience fewer social problems. The UK is far from at ease with itself. We value consumerism but the poorest people cannot afford to be part of that and the richest are rewarded far in excess of their actual needs.

Once again today the Chancellor Mr Osbourne has reiterated that the Coalition Government's plans to cut public expenditure are the correct course but I fear they will only increase the disconnection between worse and better off people. A recent blog by Will Straw on the ippr website shows that the UK government's plans for cuts are massively deeper and faster than anything that has been proposed in the US even by the Tea Party. Perhaps Mr Osbourne is right, maybe this is the only way to deal with the deficit but is the human price worth paying?

Funding the sector

2011-08-04T22:54:00.066+01:00

Last Tuesday The Journal reported on TUC research about the impact of public sector funding cuts on voluntary organisations. The article featured a photograph of me looking particularly grumpy!

Yes Children North East did lose some local authority funding last year but the impact of cuts is not as bad as we feared largely because Newcastle City Council decided to protect many grants to voluntary organisations by creating the Newcastle Fund. We worked hard to secure grants from other sources to maintain some services and have set about offering others for local authorities and schools to purchase from us in different ways.

Fortunately Children North East has projects spread across 5 local authorities offering a wide range of different services funded in several different ways. The voluntary organisations that are most at risk are those smaller than us serving a neighbourhood well but wholly dependent upon a single grant. The 'Big Society' needs neighbourhood organisations like that to succeed.

Government seems to think voluntary organisations are like small businesses, its plans for funding us is to offer loans at market rates of interest rather than grants. But voluntary organisations and charities do not sell their services or generate income so it is hard to see how loans can be repaid even by organisations of the size of Children North East. We think sustainability lies in a diversity of income sources - grants from charitable foundations and philanthropists as well as the public sector, contracts, fund raising events and selling some services and activities - that is our plan this year.

120 years old today

2011-07-11T17:08:00.003+01:00

120 years ago on 11th July 1891, 120 ‘street vendors’ - children living on the streets set out from Newcastle on a day tripto the seaside. The outing was paid for by the generosity of Mr. John Lunn, aGosforth shipping merchant and organised by his neighbour Mr. John Watson, whohad been concerned about the plight of street children for some years. It ishard for us to imagine that in those days the centre of Newcastle was like today’s slums in Mumbai ora Brazilian shanty town.

Children were living on thestreets because they were orphaned; rejected by a step-parent after the deathof a parent; or because their families could not afford to keep them. They madea meagre living by selling matches, bootlaces and newspapers or sweeping streetcrossings and running errands. Lord Baden-Powell, founder of the Scoutsrecorded being mobbed by the mass of ragged adults and children trying to sellhim things as he got off the train in Newcastle.If they could afford to they ate and slept in unsanitary lodging houses maybe15 to 20 in a room. If they were unlucky they slept where they could – in coalcellars. A child froze to death in the station portico.

The seaside trip was to getthe children out of the smoke and dirt and into the fresh air and sunshine forthe benefit of their health. Fresh air was considered to be very important tohealth, for example all the parks in Newcastlewere created between 1870 and 1900. The population of Newcastle grew sixfold during the 19thcentury and poor people lived in very cramped conditions – whole families of 10or more in one or two rooms. Fresh air and clean water were vital public healthconcerns.

That was the start of thePoor Children’s Holiday Association (PCHA) which quickly set up a club forstreet children in Prudhoe Street, Newcastle and a night refuge onBottle Bank, Gateshead where the Hilton hotelnow stands. For a nominal fee the children could get shelter, good food,clothing, boots, an activity club and health checks by volunteer doctors andnurses.

Unlike some other children'scharities, the PCHA was open to children of all faiths; its mission was to endstreet vending by training children to earn a good living. The organisation soonset up a ‘farm colony’ at Stannington, near Morpeth where boys were trained tobe farm labourers and a home in Shotley Bridge that trained girlsto be domestic servants.

In 1907 the PCHA set up thefirst children's TB Sanatorium in the country next to the farm colony whichsupplied it with fresh farm produce. TB known as 'consumption' was the cancerof the times and popularly thought to be a shameful disease caused by dirt and poverty.We think of it as a disease of the lungs but many of the children atStannington had TB in their bones and the cure was traction which meant beingstrapped into metal supports in bed for weeks or months.

In 1988 the PCHA changed itsname to Children North East. Today we no longer see children in rags with noshoes but poverty and disadvantage are still with us. Children still go withoutmeals and live in overcrowded houses. In some parts of the North East threequarters of all children live in poor families – mostly parents in poorly paidwork. Every year we remember the origins of the charity with a huge Sandcastlecompetition for primary school children on South Shieldsbeach. Like the street children of 1891 many of today’s children have neverbeen to the sea before.

Children North East believesit is just not fair some children do not get the same chances and breaks. Ourmission is ‘to promote the rights of children and youngpeople; and counter the effects of inequality on them, their families andcommunities' or 'better lives for poorer children' and everything we do is to makeup for missed opportunitie.

Going to bed crying with hunger

2011-06-16T09:51:00.002+01:00

On Tuesday morning the Radio 4 Today programme broadcast Emma Simpson talking to a family in Bournemouth. Both parents work - Dad cleaning at night and Mum a school dinner lady; they have a mortgage and need to run a car but do not have enough money for food. Often the parents go without meals to make sure the children don't go to bed crying with hunger. The report noted the rise in demand by families for food from Trussell Trust Food Banks which are organised by churches.

Later on in the same programme Paul Johnson, Director of the Financial Services Agency explained why the poorest people currently experience higher inflation than the rest of us. It's because they spend a greater proportion of income on food and fuel both of which have risen rapidly due to world commodity prices since the recession began in 2008. Better off people spend a greater proportion of their income on mortgage interest which has been low since 2008. He said the bottom fifth of the population are currently experiencing inflation of 4.5% while for the top fifth it is 2.5%.

Wages are static so inflation eats into household income, but at a higher rate for poorer people. Government used to link welfare benefit rates to the Retail Price Index but in April 2011 the Coalition Government changed it so that now rates are linked to the Comsumer Price Index which tends to rise more slowly than RPI. Over time this means the value of benefits will decrease.

Children North East has always been concerned about the impact that poverty has on children. Our mission is to ensure no child's potential is diminished due to poverty. There are going to be more children living in poverty and their lives are going to become harder.

Roger Olley MBE

2011-06-11T14:59:00.017+01:00

Congratulations to Roger Olley who has been awarded the MBE in the Queen's birthday honours for ‘services to families’. From 2000 until his retirement in 2010 Roger led the Father's Plus Service for Children North East.

In the 1990s we recognised that many services for 'families' actually only engage with mothers yet research shows children do best when both parents are actively involved in looking after their children and their education. So we set up the Father's Plus Service to prepare men for fatherhood and ensure that fathers are included as equal and valued parents in services such as childbirth and maternity, early years and primary schools.

Under Roger’s leadership the Fathers Plus service has become the leading UK experts on how to involve fathers and male carers in ‘family’ services. Roger managed a team of Fathers Workers who built up expertise in involving Dads then spread this knowledge to Sure Start Children's Centres, Primary Schools and Community Health Services all over the UK.

Roger contributed significantly to the development of national policies and strategies about including fathers, he co-authored the ‘Developing Men Friendly Organisations’ accredited training course which has been taken up by managers, policy makers and practitioners in organisations all over the UK. Since his 'retirement' he is still in great demand to advise public sector organisations and speak at conferences. He also continues to write about fatherhood.

Blagdon Hall

2011-06-09T20:11:00.000+01:00

Blagdon Hall near Stannington, Northumberland is the home of the Ridley family. It is set in stunning gardens which were landscaped by Capability Brown who was born not far away. The Hall is not open to the public but occassionally the family allow access in order to support a particular charity. We are very grateful that they allowed Children North East to use the grounds for the first time last Saturday. We invited families from far and wide to come and enjoy the grounds and celebrate our 120th birthday.

It was a cracking day, everyone who came enjoyed themselves and there was plenty for the children to do too including refreshments organised by Jaspers catering company and entertainment from a dance school. There was a birthday cake to cut and share and we all sang Happy Birthday. Our Families Plus staff organised everything with their customary attention to detail and care of children uppermost in everyone's minds.

It was a shame the sunny hot weather of the previous day did not last into Saturday when it was windy and cold which I suspect put people off coming. Never mind though it was a good day. Everyone was happy including the Ridley family who thought it very well organised. So we hope we might be invited back again next year. Perhaps a Sunday might be better, may be even Father's Day and ask all the children in the region to bring their Dads? Now that would be an occassion!

‘Poor Child’

2011-06-08T12:48:00.035+01:00

BBC 1 TV showed this documentary late on Tuesday 7th June, it can still be viewed on iplayer. This moving programme followed four children living in poor families in Glasgow, Bradford and Leicester. The programme showed the child’s view of growing up in poverty as they spoke eloquently about their lives. A blog by the progamme’s producer has sparked the largest number of comments ever about a BBC programme, which can be read here: www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/tv/2011/06/poor-kids.shtml

What moved me was how large the shortage of money figured in the children's view of the world. They understood household finances in detail, how precarious it was and how every purchase had to be finely balanced against every other expense. My own children's knowledge of family finances would be minimal by comparison.

It also struck me how slowly and carefully the children ate. Poor families frequently skip meals, the children said they only got dinner at school (free school meals) but not in the school holidays. It is no surpirse then that they appreciated what little food they had and made it last.

On a similar note Save the Children have recently published a 10 page report about children’s (mainly teenagers) views of poverty which is available online at: http://offlinehbpl.hbpl.co.uk/NewsAttachments/PYC/Childrens%20Views%20briefing%203rd%20pp.pdf

The Jubilee People's Millions

2011-06-06T13:04:00.027+01:00

Our proposal for a Young People’s Community Cafe at WEYES has been shotlisted for the Jubilee People’s Millions. Young People, staff and young people at WEYES have worked with Tyne Tees TV to produce a short appeal which will be televised on Monday 27th June. It will appear 'head to head' alongside an appeal for a scheme in Knaresborough to help elderly people with their shopping. Then the public get to vote by phone and the project with the most votes gets the money. You can read about both projects and how it works on the Jubilee Peoples Millions website: www.peoplesmillions.org.uk/2011-finalists/tyne-tees

Our appeal is for £60,000 to set up a cafe in the existing large kitchen area at WEYES. The cafe will provide work experience for young people in food preparation, food hygiene and service skills. During the week it will be open for young people. But at weekends we will open it to the whole community so building bridges between the generations.

We need as many people as possible to vote for us on Monday 27^th June (we think we need at least 60,000 votes!). Please show your support by sharing it on Facebook: www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=123950607687586 You can also email jubilee.millions@children-ne.org.uk and we will send you the phone number to vote for us when it is published on 27th June.

The Bigger Picture

2011-06-03T19:55:00.007+01:00

For some years Children North East has held an annual conference for staff, volunteers and Trustees which we call 'The Bigger Picture'. It is the only opportunity to get the whole organisation together once a year to celebrate the previous year and think about the coming one. It is a major chance for us all to work on common issues and for me to set out what I think we need to focus on in the coming 12 months. I put a lot of work into each Bigger Picture to set just the right tone.

This year's Bigger Picture took place last Thursday and judging by the evaluation forms that were completed at the end many people thought it was the best ever. I was particularly pleased that 9 of our 12 Trustees came for part of the day.

Of course it has been a very difficult year so I wanted to showcase and acknowledge every project's achievements. We could not ignore the 120th anniversary either with a fascinating and absorbing account of life for street children in Newcastle in 1891 by one of our newer Trustees who has taken an interest in researching this. But more important I wanted to show how the whole organisation contributes has a common identity and contributes to a common purpose. We did this by redefining the values of the organisation and in my address when I showed how each project contibutes to improving the lives of poorer children in our region.

More about this in future blogs - it will be a major theme for the coming months.

Newcastle Youth Council

2011-05-26T19:38:00.000+01:00

Last Friday I attended the official launch of Newcastle Youth Council. It is a little over a year since Children North East organised the first ever election to the Youth Council when 8,500 young people voted for over 50 candidates. Since then the ones who were successfully elected have been working hard to create what it thought to be the first independent Youth Council in England. There has been a lot to be done - working out the terms of reference for the Council - what it wants to do and how to do it, how often it will meet, what it will discuss and its relationship with Newcastle City Council. Also setting up the brand and marketing. The launch also marks the launch of their website: www.newcastleyouthcouncil.co.uk

Children North East has been helping the Youth Council in all these tasks. Not telling them what to do or how to do it but facilitating, advising and carrying out tasks they requested. The launch last week was the culmination of all that work. The Youth Council depends on a grant from the City Council but in all other ways is now able to manage its own affairs. This is the goal of our work with them.

The recent political change to the City Council from Liberal Democrat to Labour may mean many changes however I hope they will continue the grant to the Youth Council so that it can run its affairs for the coming year, its first year of full independent operation.

A regional voice

2011-05-19T16:23:00.101+01:00

It's in the name - Children North East is a regional charity. True almost all our services are in the north of the region but our photography project (see 5th May) funded by the Beatrice Webb Memorial Trust will engage with 100 children and young people in each of the 12 local authority areas in the region, including the southern Teesside ones.

The Coalition government is abolishing regional bodies which probably makes sense in other parts of the country that don't have a sense of regional identity, but the North East is an exception. People outside think the North East has a regional identity and even though Tyneside, Wearside and Teesside have their differences we do share a common legacy of the decline of coal mining, ship building and heavy industry. Greater London is the only other identifiable English region, there the regional development budget has been given over to the Mayor. In the North East the RDA's money disappears with it. Government Office North East has already closed and other regional bodies are set to go too. At the same time the North East, largely Labour, has lost practically all its political influence. A vacuum is developing and there is much discussion in the region how to fill it.

Earlier this week VONNE (Voluntary Organisations Network North East) launched their 'Thrive' initiative at an event in the Great North Museum. There were organisations from the whole of the region. 'Thrive' is about informing us about loans from Charity Bank, European Union funding, loans and business support for social enterprises etc. - the so called 'new funding environment' for the voluntary sector.

Last Friday I took part in a discussion at Durham University about what structures can we collectively put in place to do the things we think need organising regionally such as attracting tourists, transport and economic development. This week we had a useful meeting with the Institute for Local Governance at Durham University which is interested in collaboration between academics in the 5 universities in the region and people working here. They call it 'co-production' - a combination of academic and 'tacit' knowledge.

Today I have been to a conference organised by NEPACS, a Durham based prison visitor charity which is even older than Children North East. The conference was to disseminate recommendations from research they commissioned into the needs of prisoners families and their children. NEPACS works with all the prisons in the North East. The conference was addressed by the Prison's Minister who questioned why NEPACS should not be ambitious to work in other parts of the country. But charities evolve to fit their local circumstances, ways of working here do not necessarily transplant elsewhere. And we are not businesses, our ambition is to do good, not to grow for growth's sake.

Our photography project is opening doors for us with the regional child poverty strategy group which is lead by the Association of North East Councils. I am hopeful Children North East will indeed become known as knowledgeable about child poverty for the whole region and for ensuring that children and young people's voices are heard.

A Big Lottery visit

2011-05-12T15:19:00.053+01:00

We hosted a two day visit this week from a member of staff from the Big Lottery. He was on a 'fact finding' mission to find out what life is like in a voluntary sector organisation, I gather some of his colleagues were on similar visits in other organisations. He visited some of our projects - the ones that are easiest to 'see' because they are in buildings - WEYES, the creche and after school club in the homeless families accommodation; and also one of our Youth Link projects. Then he had discussions with senior members of staff.

I spent the end of his second day with him. I was delighted to be told how impressed he was with the quality of work he had seen, the care taken by Children North East staff in their work and their commitment to the children and young people they work with. I welcomed the Big Lottery wanting to find out more about what actually happens 'on the ground'. For some time I have felt the Big Lottery's idea of grant making has been too 'traditional'. They seem to assume that grants pay for a particular project based in a particular building, a model which just does not work for an application by a consortium of organisations. In the latter it seems to me although one organisation administers the grant, the others get paid for the work they do (a spot purchasing model) I think that encourages and supports the direction in which we all have to go, but Big Lottery seem reluctant to support it.

We got to talking about ideas we have for projects. Last year Gateshead shared some research with us which showed that children we struggled in school almost always shared 4 features - poor literacy, poor numeracy, poverty (free school meals) and born late in the school year. We would like to train secondary school students to be reading buddies to primary school children. This would improve the primary school children's reading; give the secondary school students new skills that could make them more employable; and would smooth the transition to secondary school. We could do it in Gateshead by building on the relationships we have with schools through our frindships groups and by adapting our Youth Link scheme that trains and support young people as volunteers to mentor other young people. I am pleased to say he thought this was a brilliant, simple idea and encouraged us to apply for a grant.

Child poverty photography project

2011-05-05T15:47:00.016+01:00

I have mentioned before that we are being supported by the Beatrice Webb Memorial Trust to conduct a photography project across the whole North East asking 100 children and young people in each local authority to take photographs that illustrate what poverty means where they live. We have been piloting the concept in some of our own projects this month ahead of rolling it out across all 12 local authorities in June and July.

The two images below are from a series taken by one young woman. A recent survey of residents in this area of Newcastle found that they were generally happy with the neighbourhood, they found it friendly and safe. The photographs show how the physical area makes the photographer feel.


Cheap food	Junk and Disorderly

The pictures are about junk, disorder, cheapness, secondhand and second rate, poor quality, scrap, trash. Hard to maintain aspirations among all that. WEYES is in this area, it's very appearance says 'quality', an investment in young people's futures.

If other children and young people produce such eloquent images they will provide a moving insight into what poverty does to young minds.

Localgiving.com

2011-04-21T16:25:00.007+01:00

Community Foundations across the UK are supporting this new website that showcases charities in the local area and allows people to make donations to those local good causes. Click on the link below to visit the Children North East pages on Localgiving.com

At the moment you can give to Children North East through Just Giving.com but they charge a higher fee to organisations than this new Localgiving.com one does. Another advantage to Localgiving.com is that the Community Foundations will promote it. This is great for a regional charity like us. In our experience local people are more likely to support a local charity if they know about it for the simple reason that unlike national charities we can guarantee every penny raised in the North East is spent in the North East.

The start of a new era

2011-04-07T14:58:00.044+01:00

On 1st April we finally learned the last local authority decisions about grant allocations to our projects. I feel very sorry for those of our staff whose jobs are dependent on those grant allocations. They have been on notice of risk of redundancy since the beginning of January that their jobs would end on 31st March unless further funding was forthcoming. Imagine the worry and stress of living with that uncertainty right up to the wire and even a day beyond. Unfortunately our staff are used to this, many having been through it before, some several times, they see it as a fact of life in the voluntary sector and they have confidence in their senior managers that we will do our best to preserve the work that we do for children and families and the jobs that supports.

Overall the whole organisation has done well, we will be able to set a balanced budget that will represent a total income in 2011-2012 only 6% less than the year just ended. This is a huge improvement on the predictions we made last July and is testament to the very hard work of the whole management team talking to local authorities and the NHS about their grants to us and our contracts with them; developing and obtaining grants from charitable trusts for new projects; and entirely new ways to generate income too. We can be justifiably pleased with ourselves.

However we cannot afford to rest on our laurels for too long. Virtually every source of income we have is only guaranteed for 12 months and 10% of our total income is from the Transition Fund which is definately for one year only and its purpose is to enable us to make the changes necessary to adapt to the new funding environment. This is a new era in which organisations like Children North East will generate income from sale of services like a business but for public benefit instead of profit. I am optimistic the Transition Fund gives us the means to adapt.

Goodbye Western Tynedale Children's Centre in Haltwhistle

2011-03-31T09:05:00.000+01:00

Today we say goodbye to the staff team at Sure Start Children's Centre Western Tynedale in Haltwhistle. Our contract to manage the Children’s Centre on behalf of Northumberland County Council is ending, the County Council has decided to manage the Children's Centre itself and our staff team are transferring to become employees of Northumberland Count Council.

Children North East has worked in Western Tynedale for 18 years when the Rural Action for Families in Tynedale (RAFT) first started. RAFT toured isolated villages in a converted double decker bus offering the same sorts of services now provided by Children's Centres. In 2002 in conjunction with the Haltwhistle Partnership, we set up a prototype Children's Centre in a shop on Haltwhistle High Street. In 2007 when the present building opened, we won the contract from Northumberland County Council to manage the Children's Centre services and have done so ever since.

We have cooperated fully with the County Council to ensure a smooth transfer of responsibility for the Children's Centre in the interests of the families who use the Centre and our staff. However we did challenge the decision of the County Council to take over management of the Children's Centre on the grounds of lack of consultation, lack of communication about the reasons for the decision and unfairness because all other contracts with VCS organisations to manage Children’s Centres in the county have been extended until March 2012. We had local support however when the County Council eventually responded it was clear that they would not be moved.

During the course of the TUPE negotiations it became clear that the County Council's motivation is to save money by amalgamating management and staffing of all the Children’s Centres in Tynedale which may mean limiting opening hours and a reduced service to families.

We feel we have an obligation to families in Tynedale to do what we can to ensure they continue to have access to the same services as at present. So I have written to the MP for Tynedale to tell him our fear that families may suffer as a result of the County Council's decision.

Children North East is proud of the difference that our staff and volunteers have made for families in Tynedale over 18 years. In particular the present staff team at the Children's Centre who achieved a resounding ‘good’ in all aspects of the Ofsted inspection last autumn to add to national awards in former years. We are leaving a strong legacy in Haltwhistle and outreach to the surrounding communities.

I hope that Sure Start Children’s Centre Western Tynedale will continue to thrive and wish the staff every success for the future.

Transition Fund

2011-03-24T12:00:00.003Z

The Transition Fund is government money to help voluntary sector organisations adapt to the new funding environment. It was set up because government recognised there will be fewer grants in the future from councils and other parts of the public sector for voluntary organisations; and that there are likely to be fewer but larger contracts. They saw that voluntary organisations will need to become more enterprising and fund themselves in different ways to survive.

Children North East applied for and I am delighted that we have been awarded £180,000 from the Transition Fund. Our application proposed, and the money will be spent in a number of ways. This is very good news for Children North East, it will enable us to adapt to a new era for the voluntary sector and help us to remain vibrant, relevant and effective.

We need external advice from a charity finance consultant to help us adapt our financial forecasting and budget monitoring to support income generation particularly spot purchasing. We also want to franchise some of our existing service models so that we can spread the benefit of our services to more children and young people, this will also need external advice to achieve.

We urgently need to improve marketing. In future schools and GPs rather than local authorities and PCTs will be purchasing services for children, young people and families so we must make sure they know about what we offer. Some of the grant will help with this.

Research and development is really important so that what we do remains relevant to the needs and wishes of children and young people in the region. So we will be investing more in that.

The Big Society is about opportunities for volunteers and getting more people involved in local charities not only in services (as we have done for over 30 years) but also fund raising and helping with the general running of the organisation. We also want to be able to provide apprenticeships, student placements and work opportunities for young people.

Finally the public sector will still want to buy our services but one at a time (spot purchasing) rather than funding a whole service. Part of the grant will go towards supporting us to do that.

Monitoring this grant is very 'light touch', the government wanted to make it easy for voluntary organisations to spend the money wisely without too much bureaucracy. We can start spending the money immediately!

Now it's really frustrating

2011-03-10T13:39:00.002Z

Last week I thought the long wait was over and announcements about funding for our services were immiment, but 7 days on and we are no further forward. In 2010-2011 we received nearly £500,000 from Newcastle City Council in the form of grants and contracts mainly for work with families, we still don't know how much of that will continue after 31st March.

Prudently we issued 'at risk of redundancy' notices to staff (40% of all our workers) in those services in January and have been working through the consultation process with them since then. This month we are having to tell them their jobs are ending on 31st March. We do not have the reserves to pay people after that, there is no alternative but to let skilled and experienced people go.

I have been going to team meetings of staff in this predicament. Is is impressive that although they are extremely worried for themselves, their first concern is for the children and families they work with, people who are among the most vulnerable in our society. They want to be able to make 'good endings' with each family, their professionalism cannot be faulted but time is running out. Should they tell families now that support will cease at the end of this month? But that would only add to the burden vulnerable people already carry. Or should they wait a little longer in the hope it all works out OK? It worries them other services may not be there either to refer families to, so families could be left with little or no support. It is barely acceptable to string staff along to the very last moment waiting for announcements about money but another thing entirely to take away support from families and children in need with no warning.

Our family support services in Newcastle utilise a lot of trained and willing volunteers too - very topical in the 'Big Society' but actually we have been doing it for years. We have been talking to them about the financial situation. They too put the children and families needs first and are still prepared to take on new work even though they know there could be no paid back-up for them if the funding stops.

So, I had hoped by now we would know where we stood and be able to plan (to set a budget!) but instead we have a continuation of the uncertainty which began before Christmas but now it is really frustrating.

The long wait is nearly over

2011-03-03T16:44:00.000Z

Local Authorities have taken different approaches to how they manage grant funding to voluntary organisations in the context of reductions in their own funding. Newcastle City Council decided to create the 'Newcastle Fund' - a single fund for all voluntary sector grants. They did this by amalgamating all the existing grants in every part of the Local Authority and inviting voluntary organisations to apply for assistance. If successful the benefit for the voluntary sector would be guaranteed grants for 3 years (instead of the former piecemeal arrangements); and the benefit to the Local Authority would be far better knowledge of what it spends on services provided by voluntary organisations and understanding where are what they are doing.

The scheme was very oversubscribed caused in part by Council Departments encouraging voluntary organisations to apply to the Newcastle Fund instead of looking to contractural arrangements for funding direct from Departmental budgets. However true to their word the City Council has started to announce allocations this week. I am delighted that WEYES has been granted a significant sum each year for the next 3 years to replace the grants we used to receive annually.

We also applied for grants forsome other work in the city - with families living in temporary accommodation; children not attending school; and supporting families in the community. We very much hope to hear good news about those applications very soon.

Disappointingly we heard this week from the Big Lottery 'Youth in Focus' fund that two applications we were involved in had not been successful. Both were partnerships of voluntary organisations, one for work with young carers in Northumberland and the other with care leavers in Newcastle. However the experience of developing and making those applications collectively was beneficial to the extent that everyone involved in them wants to apply to other funders for grants or other forms of funding to make the work happen.

Good news!

2011-02-24T14:06:00.065Z

Excellent news from the Big Lottery this week! Our application for 3 years funding was successful amounting £460,510 to extend our 'BU' course for young people into more schools in Newcastle and Gateshead. ‘BU’ (Be Yourself) is one of several accredited courses for young people that have been developed with young people by WEYES to improve the self-esteem, confidence and wellbeing of young people. The course leads to a Diploma which for some young people is the only recognised qualification they have and can be the spur they need to enrol on a college course. We were also very pleased to have the publicity in the newspapers and even on the local TV news.

Also wonderful news from Gateshead Council who have decided to continue to grant fund our 'Gateshead Supporting Children' project. This is particularly good news because for most of the past year they been warning us that the grant would end on 31st March. The change of heart seems to have come about because the primary schools really value these 'friendship groups' that the project runs. The groups are for children most at risk of social exclusion and they help improve school attendance and overall educational achievement. Children are referred to the groups by their teachers. Children North East staff visit the children and their parents at home to obtain their agreement and also make an important link between the school and home. The groups run for a whole term in school during the school day for 4 to 6 children at a time.

Our 3 Year Plan

2011-02-17T13:42:00.010Z

The Board of Trustees met in January and approved a 3 year plan for Children North East. The reason Children North East exists is to do as much good as possible for as many children and young people in need in the North East of England. Last year we reviewed and agreed our current objectives to be:

To promote the rights of children, young people; and counter the effects of inequality on them, their families and communities.

And we do this by:

· Affirming family relationships;

· giving children and young people opportunities that raise aspirations; and

· encouraging community engagement.

During the next 3 years (until April 2014) the Trustees have agreed to concentrate on these 3 things:

a) Be known to speak out about child poverty in North East England.

Children North East started 120 years ago as an organisation to assist poor children. Essentially our work is still about child poverty. One third of children in the north east are poor and the proportion is likely to grow in the next 3 years.

Our name is more familiar than it used to be, but the public does not know what we stand for or what we do. As other regional bodies are disbanded, we have the chance to be a truly regional organisation advocating for the rights of poorer children and young people from Berwick upon Tweed to Teesside.

How we will know we are succeeding - Significant regional public activities highlighting child poverty each year during the next 3 years.

b) Increase the spread and impact of what we do.

At present, we work in Northumberland, Newcastle, Gateshead, Sunderland and parts of County Durham, yet we are called Children North East. We ought to be present in more of the region.

We do not know exactly how many children and young people use our services each year but estimate it to be about 4,000.

We are reducing overheads but Children North East will continue to need a turnover of at least £2 million a year to remain viable, to develop new services and adapt to all the changes ahead.

How we will know we are succeeding:

1. Provide services in all the Tyne and Wear Local Authorities and all of County Durham.

2. Reach 5,000 children and young people a year by 2014 and explain the impact we have.

3. Annual turnover of £2.5m a year by 2014.

c) Be financially self-sustaining.
Public Sector spending cuts mean relying on grants and contracts from the public sector is no longer sustainable. Some Father’s Plus activities have been funded by selling them; in 2010 we also began to earn income by selling Hidden Harm services as ‘spot purchases’. Paying for our activities by selling them must now become our main financial model.

This will have big implications for the way we budget, monitor and manage our finances; for contracts of employment, which can no longer be linked to grants or contract; and we must invest in marketing our services.

How we will know we are succeeding – by 2013-2014 a minimum of 40% of our total income should be ‘earned’.

Working for nothing

2011-02-10T10:46:00.015Z

Like any other business we must follow good employment practices. We cannot be certain that funding for some our projects will continue past 31st March so in January we issued 'at risk of redundancy' notices to 36 of our 80 staff. Senior Managers and HR are now engaged in individual consultation meetings with each of those people. The purpose of the meetings is to explain the situation, why they could lose thier job, what is being done to prevent that and ask them if they have any suggestions to make about it.

You learn a lot about people during these meetings for example how important their work is to them, not just financially, though of course that it always important, but how much they care about what they do and the children, young people and families they work with. Many staff would rather radically reduce their hours (and income) rather than give up on the people they help during their work.

One part time worker told us all her income goes on child care. She has 3 children, when she is at work two go to a nursery (part of a local authority run Children's Centre) and the third one goes to an after school club. The whole of her part-time salary just covers the monthly cost of that child care. The only financial benefit to her of working is that it entitles her to Tax Credits. She was worried that the government is planning to change Tax Credits, if that happens there would be no point in her working at all, she would be better off just staying at home. She wants to work at least part-time because her current arrangement works well for her and her children.

So far all the talk in the news has been about cuts in public services but the proposed changes in benefits have not yet even begun to bite, when they do many families are going to be siginifcantly worse off.

Child Poverty - definately not a thing of the past

2011-01-20T10:41:00.045Z

This poster is part of the rolling digital display on the departure boards at Newcastle Airport, you can also find it on the Children North East facebook. 7 million passengers a year pass through the airport and all of them look at the departure boards so we hope it will have impact. This is our theme for our 120th anniversary year, we are very pleased with the image and hope it will appear in other places too. The picture also includes our ‘120 years’ logo.

The picture incorporates a photograph from our 1890’s archive of one of the 'street vendors' that our founders set out to help. In those days poverty was more visible - there would have been dozens of children without shoes, indeed one of the first acts of our charity was to set up a store of donated boots and clothing. It is rare to see children on the streets with no shoes these days but no one knows how many children are wearing shoes that are too small because their parents cannot afford new ones - just one of the ways in which child poverty has become 'invisible'.

We are joining with the Beatrice Webb Memorial Trust to host a national conference about child poverty in Newcastle this autumn which will also be the culmination of a photography project with 1,200 children and young people – 100 in each North East local authority area from Northumberland to Teesside. Working with existing groups, we will invite children and young people to take photographs that illustrate what poverty means to them where they live now – despite all the work on child poverty in our region in recent years, this will be the first time children and young people will be able to contribute to the debate on a large scale. The photographs will form an exhibition at the conference then hopefully tour museums and libraries all over the region as well as online and illustrate a national report on poverty the Beatrice Webb Foundation will I hope that the project will also help us identify where to target our resources to best effect.

VAT at 20%

2011-01-07T16:33:00.001Z

So what relevance does the rise in VAT have for children, after all children's clothing and basic foods are still exempt from VAT? It's petrol, the average price per litre before the increase was £1.25 and now it is £1.28, up 3p a litre. For many years Children North East has worked in the most rural parts of Tynedale. We know a lot about life for families on low incomes living in 'rural isolation'. Public transport is virtually non existent in most places so families need a car in order to do the basics - to get to food shops, the GP, a chemist. Every parent knows how important the GP and a chemist are when you have small children. Running a car is expensive even if the car you have is an old one - insurance, tax, MOT, servicing, replacement tyres and so on. Now add to that petrol prices at a record high. If you have ever bought petrol in an isolated spot you will know it is more expensive than town anyway and now it will be even more so. Parents will think twice about using cars other than essential journeys. How many families will decide that trips to the swimming pool or soft play with the children are no longer essential. It may seem like a small sacrifice but the impact on children will be fewer opportunities to socialise, to play and to widen their horizons.

2010

2010-12-30T10:21:00.005Z

First a huge THANK YOU to all the people who gave Christmas gifts for children during our annual 'Giving Tree' appeal, and to the businesses who helped to advertise, support and to collect gifts. Last year over 6,000 gifts were donated and this year looks to have exceeded that record. This really makes an enormous difference to children and families in need at this time of year. It tells them despite all the difficulties that life can bring, people really do care about the worst off in our society. It is the 'Big Society' in action, in the same way as it always has done.

Children North East ends the year in a very different place to its start. There has been a change of government, the emergency budget and the Comprehensive Spending Review. We all know about cuts in public spending but none of us yet knows quite what that will mean for our service users or our services.

We recognised early what the scale of the financial problem might be and got to work quickly and enthusiastically. It was important first to revisit our objectives and restate our commitment to children, children and young people's rights and to countering the effects of inequality on them, their families and communities. This gave us a firm basis from which to think clearly about the services we can offer and freed us from thinking that the only ways to finance our work were through contracts or grants to run whole projects. We are beginning to see that local authortities, schools and eventually GPs are prepared to purchase individual pieces of work from us.

During the last few months we have made many applications to Big Lottery and charitable foundations for funding for projects as well as continuing to talk to local authorities and PCTs about next year’s grants and contracts; and we have joined with other organisations to make applications for Big Lottery grants and to collaborate on other projects.

I think we have made a tremendous start to respond and adapt to the new funding environment; and I am optimistic that Children North East will cope well next year when some of our services will change from 'being funded' to 'being bought'. However there is still lots more to do and several months more uncertainty before we will know what size of organisation we will be in 2011-2012.

Boys reading

2010-12-23T10:17:00.099Z

Last week the BBC news reported 10% of 11 year old boys have a reading age of 7 or less. Michael Gove was interviewed and predicatbly said the solution is to give schools more freedom so that those who get the best results can support others.

Primary school is the time to learn how to read. By the time children move to secondary school at age 11 it is too late. Academic studies found that text books for year 7 (the first year of secondary school) typically require a reading age of 13 or 14 years. They are a struggle for 11 year olds but will be an impossibility for someone with a reading age of only 7. Secondary school teachers are trained and expect to teach subjects, they assume that the basics - reading and maths have been covered in primary school. Secondary school teachers just don't have the time or skills to focus on reading.

A couple or weeks ago we had a contract monitoring meeting with representatives of Gateshead Council. Last summer Gateshead looked at their data on 'vulnerable' children - the ones that need most help in school. They looked at many factors and found that typically vulnerable children had 6 or more factors but almost always had the same four factors. The four factors are - free school meals (meaning children from poorer families), late birthday (meaning born after Christmas so younger when they started school and remaining among the younger members of the class), poor scores at Key Stage 1 maths, and poor scores at Key Stage 1 reading.

Children learn to read when people read to them at home and with them at school. Many primary schools employ learning support assistants or volunteers to help children with their reading. However not all can afford to do this or have local communities able or prepared to give time to help children read.

School leadership counts for much but so do money and community resources. Michael Gove says the 'pupil premium' - £430 a year for each pupil registered for free school meals, will enable schools to provide whatever support they think best. Doubtless David Cameron would say the 'Big Society' would encourage adults to volunteer to help out in schools, but is that realistic in all communities?

The value of the voluntary sector

2010-12-17T20:37:00.040Z

Nick Hurd. Minister for Civil Society was expected in the region yesterday. In anticipation the Journal, Chronicle and Northern Echo all ran features about the impact cuts in public sector funding are likely to have on voluntary organisations and community groups. The theme was picked up today by BBC Look North.

In the event Nick Hurd did not turn up. However Children North East featured prominently in the Journal and a family we worked with spoke eloquently on Look North. They are looking after their grandchildren who would otherwise be in care, and said if it were not for organisations like Children North East more children would be in care at great cost to Local Authorities.

Jo Curry, Chief Executive of the Voluntary Organisations Network North East (VONNE) was asked whether David Cameron's idea of everyone doing some voluntary work would take the place of voluntary organisations. She said the 'Big Society' already exists in the north east! A quarter of the population here have done some form of volunteering in the past year but Jo made the point there would be far fewer opportunities to volunteer if the voluntary organisations were not there.

Last week the Northern Rock Foundation published university research commisioned about the state of the voluntary sector in the north east. We have fewer active voluntary organisations per head of population than other regions, but voluntary organisations in the north east deliver more public services than in other regions particularly 'social services' such as the work Children North East does. In the main funding for those services comes from the public sector.

This week Local Authorities found out how much money they will receive from central government. Two of the authorities that face the biggest cuts (over 8%) are in our region - South Tyneside and Middlesbrough. In September the BBC commissioned research which found that Middlesbrough was the least resilient town in the country in the face of cuts to public services. No surprise places like Dorset Windsor and Maidenhead, West Sussex, Wokingham, Richmond upon Thames and Buckinghamshire all get cuts of 1% or below.

The unkindest cut

2010-12-10T13:22:00.030Z

Student protests against increased university tuition fees have grabbed the headlines this week, but amongst the protesters have been a smaller group of young people drawing attention to the abolition of Education Maintenance Allowances (EMAs). These are means tested payments made to students from poorer families who would otherwise not be able to afford to stay on in education after GCSEs. Poorer families need the additional income that their 16 year old could bring in from any kind of job. The last government brought in EMAs to take the pressure off these young people so they got the chance to do A levels. But the Coalition has abolished new EMAs from January 2011. Students who already have an EMA will continue to get it for the rest of this academic year but not the following year. The government says something called 'learner support funds' will be available through schools, colleges and training providers to help students who most need it to continue in learning, however no other details have been released. There is a real risk that many able young people will not continue their education after GSCE let alone consider a university education.

New website

2010-12-03T13:21:00.000Z

At last our new website is working please visit us at: www.children-ne.org.uk.

We are delighted with all the work done by our Webdurance team who have given their time and talent free to produce our new website. It started with a marathon 24 hour event at Newcastle University last summer followed by a lot of tweaking since. However the main problem has been sorting out where to host the website. Our existing web server did not have the specification required to host the new site and the all important content management behind it which enables us to easily update and edit the content of the website. It has taken a lot of work arounds followed by extensive testing to finally get us to this launch.

I am very pleased with the result. It is a great improvement on the old site and has the potential to grow to include things like selling our Christmas cards online next Christmas. So big, big thanks to Steve and the team for all their hard work.

Sexual exploitation

2010-11-25T10:17:00.000Z

It is not often that I agree with Martin Narey, Chief Executive of Barnardos but he is right to say this week that there are many cities and towns across the country where vulnerable young women are exploited sexually.

As long as 20 years ago it was well known by residential social workers that young women who went missing from care were often picked up by unsavoury men who gave them shelter but they could then easily be drawn into prostitution. These were girls from children's homes who often had no family to look out for them. Residential staff were only authorised to work in the children's home; field social workers did not feel they had the authority to intervene in situations which did not involve parents; and the police were not much interested in tracking down young people missing from care because no crime had been committed. Of course the men the girls live with chose to have as little to do with the authorities as possible.

In the absence of no single public organisation taking responsibility to intervene, voluntary organisations step in; Barnardos and The Children's Society in particular have done pioneering work about care leavers and also sexual exploitation of children and young people. It is hard to say whether more goes on than before or that the internet has made people more aware. For example earlier this week two young women contacted one of our projects. They were worried about a friend but did not know what to do so were looking for advice. They had noticed things on their friend's Facebook page which made them think she could be being sexually exploited and thought she might not be able to do anything about it herself.

These young people were being good friends, looking out for each other. Encouraging that kind of care and providing easy ways for young people to act on their concerns (such as contacting our WEYES project) fits with the notion of 'Big Society' rather than leaving everything to public services.

Friendship groups in Gateshead primary schools

2010-11-18T13:12:00.002Z

This week Gateshead Council have published 'Delivering Vision 2030' that sets out the council's spending plans for 2011-2012. The document is for public consultation until Christmas after which the Council will make its final budget decisions.

We are delighted that the document proposes (page 52) continuing the grant it makes to Children North East for us to provide friendship groups for children in primary schools in the east of the borough. It is proposed that the grant will be reduced by 20% but we had thought it would not continue at all. At the same time the document says the council will discontinue grants to other voluntary organisations. I think this demonstrates the value that those Gateshead primary schools and Gateshead Council itself place on our service. Of course the grant is not guaranteed yet, these are proposals for public consultation but nevertheless it is promising and encouraging.

The document itself is an object lesson in clarity and transparency. It seems to list everything that Gateshead Council spends money on, says how much it spends and suggests what the council should spend next year. It also sets out a timetable when decisions will be made. Other Local Authorities could learn from Gateshead.

Newcastle PCT support for WEYES

2010-11-11T10:34:00.029Z

A large part of the revenue funding for WEYES service comes from Newcastle PCT (Primary Care Trust). For some years we have had a contract from them to provide sexual health services for young people across the west of Newcastle. At one time this was an ideal 3 year rolling contract renegotiated annually. Recently the PCT has not been able to commit to 3 years but has continued to re-negotiate the contract each year. However this week the PCT have told us the contract will stand until 31st March 2013 when the PCT itself will cease to exist and it's responsibilities transfer to the emerging GP commissioning bodies.

This is good news because it guarantees PCT revenue income and work to WEYES for the next 2 years. The reasons seem to have to do with the PCTs long established strategy to have 3 bases for sexual health services for young people spread across the city - WEYES in the west, one in the centre and one in the east. And the wish of the PCT to maintain that strategy during the transition period when its responsibilities move to GPs. In effect it saves GPs from worrying about young people's sexual health for the first year or two of their new commissioning responsibilities.

It is really good to have certainty about some of our funding when everything else is so uncertain at present.

Fathers conference

2010-11-10T09:20:00.044Z

Yesterday our Father's Plus service hosted a national conference in York. It was great to meet so many practitioners from all over the country who are passionate about the importance of including fathers in services for 'parents' and families. For 13 years Children North East has been pointing out that a great many services for parents are actually designed for mothers; and showing by example that getting fathers actively involved means working differently because most blokes are put off by the 'talking about feelings' model that services usually employ.

The theme of the conference was how to continue this important work in these straitened times. The previous government explicitly recognised the importance of fathers to good outcomes for children, it was written down in their 'Children's Plan' last year; but the Coalition government has other priorities. At the conference were presentations from officers in Blackburn with Darwen, Sunderland and Newcastle showing how our Father's Plus team has helped local services to get Dads involved in health, early years and primary education, with impressive results - you can read about it and see the conference presentations here.

Interestingly last week The Guardian reported research that fathers are less stressed and happier when they are more involved with their children and also doing their share of the housework: http://bit.ly/ddSisu I agree with that, for me family life has been the most rewarding part of my life ever since I first became a Dad 18 years ago. The magazine 'Children and Young People Now' had a different take on the same research, they say employers should treat all parents (men and women) the same when it comes to flexible working hours.

Fairness

2010-10-28T15:32:00.003+01:00

I have been thinking a lot about fairness this week seeing as the Coalition Government places such emphasis on it to justify decisions about welfare benefits in the Comprehensive Spending Review. My guess is the idea of fairness is 'hard-wired' into family life as we grow up - if there is a cake for tea everyone will want their fair share! Hasn't every child complained 'It's Not Fair!' at some point meaning they feel victim to some injustice? But I am not sure that 'Fairness' is an absolute concept in itself, I think it is more the means by which a social value is measured?

As far as I can see there are at least two models of 'fairness' in our society and we seem happy to use both at the same time, even though they contradict each other. On the one hand is the 'hunter' model - I am the hunter, through my own skill, daring and courage I kill the beast; am I not entitled to as much of the meat as I chose for myself? Anything left over can be shared with the others. And on the other hand is the 'mutual' model - we can all be the victim of bad luck, illness or accident may strike at any time through no fault of our own but when it does we can rely on the group to help us recover. The first finds it's expression in banker's bonuses and the second in the NHS and, until very recently the benefit system. Incidentally the RSA reports research evidence that we all routinely attribute our own success to hard work and talent and the success of others to their good fortune!

I have been worrying why I feel so uncomfortable about the use of 'fairness' to justify public policy. It is because it is not clear which model we are talking about in which context - applying the 'hunter' model in the context of NHS would logically mean complete privatisation of all healthcare; everyone would have to look after and pay for their own medical care.

The benefit system was set up on the presumption that some members of our society would have bad luck - sickness which prevented you from working or losing your job. It was intended to be a safety net until people got back on their feet, actually this was called the 'Social Contract' by a previous Conservative administration. However the Coalition Government is presenting a view that a large proportion of people in receipt of benefits are not unlucky at all, instead we are led to believe (probably on the back of focus group discussions) that they are feckless, lazy and 'sponging' off the rest of us. The idea of 'Fairness' in this context depends on whether you accept the premise that people are generally feckless or alternatively you believe they are unlucky. I think if we actually understood the lives of the worst off in our society we would find it is misfortune, bad luck that is almost always the root cause of their circumstances.

So for me the issue is not really 'fairness' at all, it is a question of social justice - whether we want a society in which everyone's dignity is respected and effort is rewarded but 'from each according to his ability and to each according to his need.'

CSR and AGM

2010-10-22T09:41:00.064+01:00

The long awaited Comprehensive Spending Review was announced on Wednesday and doubtless much cleverer people than I will write about it at length over the coming days and weeks. The real shock is not the likely impact on local public spending (Local Authorities) but the axe taken to the benefit system. What if families cannot find work yet their benefits are reduced after 12 months out of work; and it seems they could also lose their home when housing benefits are also reduced? The changes in housing benefit will also have a huge impact on young people and abolition of the Education Maintenance Allowance will mean far fewer will be able to afford to continue in education.

The CSR announcement is headlines, the details will follow in the coming weeks; for example of special interest to Children North East are the proposals for Sure Start Children's Centres and early intervention with families. Local Authorities will also be waiting for details before they can work out exactly how much money they will be getting from different Government Departments, then they will need to decide how to allocate it to meet local priorities. It will not be until February or even March before they are in a position to allocate money for contracted out services or grants to voluntary organisations.

Our AGM and quarterly Board meeting took place at WEYES last night. Life Members and senior managers are invited to the AGM as well as our Trustees. We launched our Impact Report for 2010 at the AGM. I am pleased with this, it is a change from the usual 'Annual Review' and much more focussed to demonstrate the difference we make for children, young people and families. We took the advice of 'New Philanthropy Capital' a think tank and consultancy to help funders and charites achieve greater impact. In August they published a paper 'Proving Your Worth to Whitehall' which recommended charities submit themselves to the same 9 testing questions posed by the Treasury to Government Departments during the Comprehensive Spending Review, so we did and the answers are in our Impact Report.

The Impact Report is organised into three themes - affirming family relationships; giving children and young people opportunities that raise aspirations; and encouraging community engagement. I think this makes more sense than the traditional 'service areas' after all no one outside Children North East cares how we organise ourselves internally, they want to know what difference we make. The Impact Report is being distributed during the next couple of weeks and will be on our website soon.

WEYES images and Comprehensive Spending Review

2010-10-14T09:39:00.046+01:00

Thnaks again to _space architecture and management who have made a short video made of images of the WEYES project from the start back in January when Tim Healy and Denise Welch did a photo shoot for the papers, to the open day last week when nearly 100 people came to see what had been achieved. You can see it on You Tube.

We are waiting on the Comprehensive Spending Review next week when the Coalition Govenment will announce the budget for the next 3 years for each Ministry. Hopefully there will be some 'headline' messages such as proposals for Children's Centres. However it is likely to be a few weeks before all the details emerge. Local Authorities get money from several different Government Departments so they will not know for a few weeks either exactly how much money they will be getting. Of course they also raise money from the Council Tax, Business Rates, car park charges and reserves, in fact only about half comes from central government.

When Local Authorities do find out exactly how much money they will have the next step is for them to decide their own priorities taking into account what they can afford. They will also have to decide what services they need and whether these are best provided by the Local Authority or the private sector or voluntary organisations like Children North East.

We hope that some of the things we already do for Local Authorities (such as supporting families in homeless accommodation to get them into proper tenancies) will continue, however it is likely Local Authorities will try to persuade us to do them for less money. And of course some things will not continue. My guess it could easily be February or even March before that last question begins to be answered. So the announcement on 20th October is just the beginning of uncertainty which could go on until April or longer next year.

Saying thank you, an inspirational story and how big is Big Society?

2010-10-08T09:17:00.055+01:00

Last Tuesday afternoon we invited the many people who helped us to rebuild the WEYES project building and interested local people to come an view the building. We wanted to say thank you to everyone by showing them what they had helped to achieve. We were delighted that nearly 100 people came to view the building and join us in a small celebration. I am really pleased that so many visitors told us we had created a place that young people can be proud of, which tells them that they are valued. This is what we set out to do and why Children North East has invested in the project.

Councillor Dipu Ahad, one of the local councillors introduced himself to me during the afternoon. He is a young man who was one of the original group of local young people consulted as to what the WEYES project should be like even before it started. This would have been about 13 years ago. He remembered the group visited other youth projects before deciding that what was needed was am 'Enquiry Service' where young people could drop in and ask about any sort of issues. Later when WEYES first opened Dipu was a volunteer helping to run the project. He said it was that experience that got him interested in youth work. He trained and worked as a youth worker in Gateshead for a while which is where he got interested in politics and was elected to serve in Elswick ward in 2007. Dipu said he felt an obligation to help 'pull up' other Asian young people into politics as well. We invited him to meet the Newcastle Youth Councillors whom I am sure would be very interested to talk to him.

I was hopeful that David Cameron would use the Conservative Party conference to explain what he means by the 'Big Society'. Having heard his speech yesterday I am disappointed. By linking the 'Big Society' to 'Fairness' it is less 'big-hearted' society and more 'mean-minded' society. The Conservatives seem to be saying that if you work hard and look after your own that gives you the right to judge whether other people deserve assistance or not. Surely fairness is about looking after the people who don't get the breaks, not bolstering up those who can take care of themselves? Doubtless there will a lot more discussion about this in the coing weeks.

Funding the BIg Society

2010-09-30T14:25:00.000+01:00

Last Friday the Children England north east regional group had a very interesting seminar about 'Social Impact Bonds' given by Chris Ford of Newcastle University.

This is an idea dreamed up by the New Labour government, Jack Straw wrote a paper about it last year. It was in the news recently with the first pilot in the Midlands to keep young offenders out of prison once they have been released. The idea is to get private money into public services. As far as I understand it, it works like this:

The Government contracts with a 'Delivery Organisation' to address a social problem (such as getting young people into training or employment); the Delivery Organisation and government agree very precise, measurable outcomes (e.g. X number of young people each in continuous training or jobs for at least 24 months); the Delivery Organisation works out how to do this perhaps by sub-contracting to other organisations (including the voluntary sector); and the Delivery Organisation also raises the money from charitable trusts, philanthropists and other lenders. The work starts, obviously with rigorous reporting and monitoring. At the end of the contract, if the Delivery Organisation has delivered the desired outcomes then the Government pays a dividend to the funders.

It looks as though everyone benefits. The young people (beneficiaries) get effective help; the Delivery Organisation (not government) carries the risk of getting the work done; it and the sub-contractors get paid for their work; the government gets things done without having to put the money up front; and instead of just giving money away, the investors may get a return on their investment which they can put towards more good works.

Government says it can pay a dividend from the savings it will have made from services it would have had to pay for if the young people not been in productive training or employment.

Here in the North East apparently Northumberland and Sunderland Local Authorities are working with the Young Foundation (who helped develop this model) to see whether local government could commission services in the same way. I might trust central government to pay on results; given the perilous state of their finances trusting local government to pay up is a different matter.

Big Society

2010-09-23T13:23:00.055+01:00

Every year I am inspired by the Great North Run. For nearly an hour a torrent of people pass the end of our street on their way from Newcastle to the sea, all on a personal quest and most raising money for good causes, including Children North East! I am sure David Cameron would approve of this mobilisation of ordinary people willing to help others through sponsorship, perhaps he would call it the 'Big-Hearted Society'?

One of the runners was Alastair Campbell, former communications adviser to Tony Blair. I was delighted to be invited by the Board of VONNE (Voluntary Organisations Network North East) to meet him over dinner that evening. It was a great evening, Alastair is a very entertaining guest.

The subject of the evening was the 'Big Society'. Clearly it is David Cameron's 'big idea' and it is obvious he is not going to give up on it. Trouble is no one really knows quite what it means. All we have are these pronoucements:

An army of 5,000 professionally trained 'community organisers'.
A Big Society bank funded from dormant bank accounts to provide money to community groups.
Neighbourhood grants for the poorest areas to help people set up local groups and social enterprises.
Allowing civil servants to do voluntary community work.
Having a national 'Big Society Day' to celebrate local community action.
New funding for social entrepreneurs to get more social enterprises going.

But when it comes to what the Big Society will actually do it seems to boil down to pubs run by community groups; volunteers staffing libraries; and kind hearted souls taking in their neighbour's abused children.

Ministers have quickly jumped onto the bandwagon so that the Big Society can mean almost anything they want it to mean. And this was Alastair Campbell's main point - don't wait to be told, the voluntary and community sector should grasp the opportunity and define what the Big Society actually means. And of course it is voluntary organisations and community groups who are the heart of a 'Big Society'. We are already here on the ground working for the benefit of local communities, engaging people in voluntary work and (in many cases) supplementing public services.

Youth Link

2010-09-16T15:16:00.000+01:00

30 years ago in 1980 Children North East started a 'Family Link' service in Newcastle which recruited parents as volunteers to befriend and help other parents who were going through difficult times. The idea worked and in the following 25 years we set up 'Family Link' projects in many parts of the north east.

Two years ago we reasoned if the model worked for adults, why not for young people too and so 'Youth Link' was born in Sedgefield. Youth Link recruits and trains young people to befriend and mentor other young people; it matches them with young people who are are in difficulty of one kind or another and supports them to help where they can. The volunteers complete a training course which is approved by an external body and can lead to an accreditation. And the service model has the National Youth Volunteer Network REACH award and is accredited by the National Mentoring and Befriending Foundation.

The model worked so well that last year we successfully applied to the Big Lottery for grants to set up two more Youth Link projects in Tynedale and Blyth Valley. The volunteers really enjoy the training which includes a team building weekend building rafts, bridges and the like. Most volunteer because the experience is likely to help them in their careers but get a lot out of getting to know and assist young people they would otherwise never met. The young people who benefit from the support relate more quickly and easily to contemporaries rather than adults and have been helped through difficulties like getting into trouble with the police, falling out with parents, suffering ME and been supported to make new friends, find new worthwhile activities and get on better terms with parents and teachers.

This evening we are hosting a celebration for all our Youth Link volunteers to award them their accreditation certificates and to thank them on behalf of the young people they have supported and Children North East for the contribution that they make.

Let's 'Lead not Plead'

2010-09-10T13:38:00.001+01:00

Last night BBC North broadcast a debate about the impact of public sector cuts on the North East. I was pleased to be in the invited audience to point out that local authorities must be mindful to make cuts which will not result in them spending more money in the long run (see my blog 5th August).

Although people were worried about the potential scale of the cuts there was general agreement that the country cannot afford the present level of public expenditure. Our region has the highest percentage of public sector employees but as was pointed out, that isn't because the public sector is too big but because the private sector is too small compared to other regions. That is why abolishing One North East, the Regional Development Agency makes little sense at just the point when its investment in the low carbon industries of the future is beginning to bear fruit in electric cars and sustainable energy generation from wind and waves.

The tone of the programme was gloomy. We have a tendancy in the North East to blame central government for our troubles. Ed Cox, Director of ippr north (Institute of Public Policy Research) tried valiantly to move the discussion away from blaming others to taking responsbility for ourselves - to 'lead not plead' but without success. Currently the voluntary sector is particularly prone to pleading for public funds. Yet not so long ago it was voluntary organisations that were valued for their innovation and courage. The voluntary sector has become too reliant on public money in the form of grants or contracts which inevitably means doing what other people ask us to do rather than take the initiative ourselves.

There is no doubt that the voluntary sector will be hit hard by cuts when they come. As Children North East has already found, local authorities will always chose to cut money for other organisations before they cut their own services and staff. Rather than moaning, blaming, doing nothing or simply hoping for the best now is the moment for voluntary organisations to take the lead. Instead of looking to the public sector to know what is best and give us the money to do it, we should use our collective knowledge of the needs of the most vulnerable members of society to commission the services needed ourselves. Larger charities and 'umbrella' organisations like VONNE and CVS bodies are well placed to take on this strategic commissioning role convening coalitions of smaller organisations to develop and deliver solutions. They also have the relationships and authority to negotiate with public bodies, grant makers like charitable trusts and philanthropic investors. We often forget that in a time of cuts in public expenditure the voluntary sector can bring extra cash to the table by accessing funding that is not available to public bodies.

Thinking ahead

2010-09-02T14:41:00.080+01:00

Just back from holiday. It is good to get away from the things which fill every day at work and take a little time to think about the future for Children North East.

The next six months are going to be extremely tough. For the last decade or more like other children's charities Children North East's income has mainly been from Public Sector grants and contracts which will be severely reduced. It is inevitable that some services funded this way will end and unfortunately some staff will lose their jobs. Even staff who keep their jobs are likely to lose some hours. A few services are funded from grant making bodies such as the Big Lottery, they will be safe for the time being. Competition for new funds from those and bodies such as charitable trusts will be very fierce and cannot be relied upon. They are more likely to fund new ideas based on solid research rather than existing projects. Income from charitable giving has only ever been a small part of our income (10%) and is unlikely to increase. We do not have large reserves we can fall back on to fund services.

The future has to be in social enterprise - offering useful, effective, value for money children and family services for sale to schools, GPs, local authorities and others. We have begun to package and market many of our existing services in this way. I am confident that this will work however I fear it will take time to establish, sadly more time than we have before the cuts come at the end of March 2011.

We still don't know what the Coalition Government's 'Big Society' actually means in detail but it certainly supports the role of volunteers. Children North East has an advantage here because we already know how to recruit, train, deploy and support volunteers to provide good services. It would be nice to have an accreditation like 'Investors in Volunteers' to demonstrate excellence in this. I am sure there is an important future for volunteers in Children North East.

But what about the longer term? What should Children North East be like in 3 years time? As a social enterprise I am certain that we will grow and in time we ought to be able to make a small surplus, how should we use that for the benefit of children and young people in North East England? The answer is in our aims: 'to promote the rights of children and young people and counter the effects of inequality on them, their families and communities'. We should be speaking out on behalf of children, young people and families. What if in three years time Children North East were in effect the 'Children's Commissioner for North East England'? Publicising our knowledge of the crucial issues affecting families and empowering children and young people to make their own voices heard about the things which effect them to the public and policy makers.

Substance misusing parents

2010-08-19T12:54:00.003+01:00

Earlier this week the NSPCC reported that more than 4,000 children called Childline during the last 12 months worried about their parents’ drinking or drug habits. 35% of the callers reported physical abuse, three times more than other children and 20% mentioned family conflict. Children as young as 5 also spoke about having to look after siblings or their own parents.

The government’s own figures show that parental substance misuse is an issue in 49% of all child protection plans nationally and 75% of all serious case reviews. Drug and alcohol misuse by parents and the effects of domestic violence on children are significant concerns for everyone working with families.

The Children North East Hidden Harm service works intensively with families where parental substance misuse, mental health or domestic violence affects parenting and children are at risk of harm. Our Hidden Harm workers are highly qualified practitioners who can help bring about lasting positive change in families in crisis. We do this by working intensively with the whole family in their own home – parents and children several hours a day for four to six weeks using a range of techniques. Our Hidden Harm service is available from 7.30 am to 8 pm for 7 days a week; and in exceptional cases throughout the night.

The work is tailored to the needs of the family but focuses on child safety, coping strategies, practical support to establish routines, managing stress and anger. After the initial intensive period we continue to follow up for at least 12 months providing additional support as necessary. Feedback is very important so Hidden Harm workers write to the family after every visit, and send copies of those letters to the referrer (usually a social worker) building up a comprehensive picture of family life.

The Hidden Harm service can also save Councils money by keeping children safely at home with their parents instead of being taken into care. On average it costs a Council £36,653 a year to look after each child in care. The Children North East Hidden Harm service costs a fraction of that for a whole family.

It is important that issues affecting children are brought to public attention but the NSPCC and other big children's charities are all guilty of scaremongering especially in summer when there is not a lot of other news about. But they rarely say what can and is being done, the Children North East Hidden Harm service is already actively working with families to reduce and reverse the harm that parental substance misuse has on children.

Brilliant news and optimism

2010-08-12T16:03:00.067+01:00

In June we were invited to London to present to the committee of an important charitable trust and ask them for a large donation towards the capital costs of the WEYES building project. Yesterday I was delighted to take a phone call to say we have been awarded the grant. This is absolutely wonderful news. We are extremely grateful to the trust for their generosity. We have applied to other charities as well but this was the biggest one. It's a huge boost to our finances and our morale. It makes us feel optimistic that other applications will be successful too.

We need optimism just now. We sent over 50 packs of information about our Hidden Harm services to potential referrers in different parts of the region this week. The Hidden Harm team have worked hard on the packs and who to send them to. They know their jobs depend on attracting referrals from other places but they have a first class service that really works all they need is the confidence to tell people about it. It does not come easily to us charity folk to sell ourselves, it feels like bragging. We prefer to quietly get on with doing a good job of helping people. I think if we can only get to meet potential referrers they will be impressed by the quality and commitment of the team and have confidence in them to deliver what they promise and have already demonstrated.

Keeping the service going

2010-08-05T10:00:00.060+01:00

A couple of weeks ago I talked about having to tell all the staff in one of our services that they faced redundancy due to the unexpected early end to a contract we had with a local authority. Since then everyone has been working hard to keep the service going. The local authority concerned has said it is an effective and useful service. We have data to show we have saved the local authority double what our service costs by actively preventing children from being taken into care (the former DCSF worked out it costs on average a local authority £36,635 a year to look after one child in care). Last week we met senior Councillors and explained the decision to end the service makes no financial or moral sense and suggested they purchase it from us one family at a time. So far we have not had a reply to that suggestion.

We know that many of the other local authorities in the region do not have a similar service for families of children at risk whose parents misuse drugs or alcohol, have mental health problems or there is domestic violence. Nationally significant parental substance misuse is a fact in 49% of all child protection plans. So we think there is fair chance that other local authorities would be interested in purchasing our specialist service for some of these particularly worrying families. We have found the names and addresses of key people in all those local authorities and put together a pack of information for them. Those marketing packs will be posted tomorrow. Next we will be phoning all those people and arranging to meet them to explain how the service can help families they know at a realistic price.

At the same time our Board of Trustees has been asked to underwrite the cost of the service until the end of December to give it a chance to attract referrals paid for by other local authorities. It has been a very busy couple of weeks but we feel hopeful that this approach will work. If it works it could be a way of sustaining some of our other services too.

WEYES is finished!

2010-07-29T10:15:00.000+01:00

The keys for 4, Graingerville North were handed to back us from _space Architecture and Management last Friday and the WEYES staff team moved back in on Tuesday, they are now busy unpacking and preparing to re-open the building to young people next week. Everyone at Children North East is absolutely delighted with the transformation to the building that _space have made. It is now a welcoming, colourful and vibrant place that will say to the young people of Benwell and Elswick, ‘you are really important, you deserve a place as good as this’. We always saw this project as an investment in the young people of the area and that is exactly what has been delivered. So a huge THANK YOU to the whole team at _space for all they have done.

_space generously looked after all the design and planning stages for free, for which we are extremely grateful. Dave Heslop did the design work which has created clean spaces within a modernised building but retained and enhanced the traditional external features of the original building. Simon Humphrey of _space managed the building project and went to exceptional lengths to keep the costs as low as possible while extending the original specification, for example to include a new roof and reconstruction of the front parapet which proved to be dangerous. And none of this would have been possible without the interets and support of Rob Charlton, Chief Executive of _space.

The WEYES staff team will be running a host of activities from the project this summer. The new facilities mean that we can offer young people a great deal more than was possible before, for example the big kitchen area is ideal for a drop-in youth café where young people can chill and we could offer work experience for other young people to help run it. The study area means that tutors working with young people who are excluded from school will have a better experience of individual tuition. And we are already receiving enquiries from other youth groups wishing to use the group/meeting rooms. We expect that the Newcastle City Youth Council will see it as their base. This is all just a beginning of what are certain to be bigger things ahead.

A Curate's Egg

2010-07-22T10:45:00.002+01:00

Like the proverbial egg this week has been good and bad in parts. On Tuesday I had to inform 10 staff that they are at risk of redundancy because the contract we have with a local authority which pays for their service will be terminated from 30th September 2010 instead of running until 31st March 2011 as planned. The local authority has said this is no reflection on the quality or need for the service which provides very intensive therapeutic work for families where the parents have issues of substance misuse and the children are at immiment threat of removal into care, it is simply a matter of finance and having to make 'in year cuts'.

The service itself started only 8 months ago and in that time has documented evidence that as a direct result of what it does 20 children have remained safely at home rather than being taken into care. Had those 20 gone into care, using the Local Authority's own figures would have cost exactly double the cost of our service. So in effect we have saved the Local Authority money. I am hoping that Councillors will see that cutting our service makes no financial sense let alone the impact on children's lives. I am hopeful they will agree to a meeting where we can make that case.

Our Trustees met yesterday evening for their quarterly Board meeting and considered my report about the likely impact of cuts in public sector spending on Children North East in 2011-2012. I am very heartened that despite the grim forecast they specifically do not want to follow the public sector line and downsize the organisation. Instead they agreed to back my plan to retain capacity, market our services so that they can be spot purchased and develop new services and sources of income. They recognise next year will be very hard but are hopeful there will be new opportunities from 2012 when GP commissioned services will begin to happen; the initial impact of cuts in public spending will be over; and the Coalition government has had time to set it's priorities for children's services.

Finally before their meeting the Trustees visited the new WEYES building and were bowled over by how good it is. Quote: 'Wow! what a transformation!'

Webdurance

2010-07-16T18:38:00.048+01:00

A huge thank you to our team who worked continuously for 24 hours to build us a new website as part of Webdurance organised by 1DayLater. This was a first for the north east and we were one of 6 charities to be chosen for a new website or website makeover.

Our team - Steve, Sarah, Graeme, Colette, Aidan and Belinda started midday yesterday and worked through continuously until noon today. They are a mix of designers and engineers with a load of creativity, ideas and commitment between them. I can't wait to show off the new design which should be uploaded in a week or so, at present it only exists on the team's PCs.

Our existing website is about 6 or 7 years old and shows its age, it is of its time being a static 'notice board' which does the job but does not change much each time you visit. The design is dull and, as the team pointed out rather blue (for boys) no pink (for girls) which means the colours are a bit dull too. I have wondered what the yellow curvy line is for too. We would like something that projects our image - friendly and professional. We want it to be different and interesting every time you visit and easy for us to edit.

The team have produced a colourful, fresh design which incorporates our Twitter, Facebook and Wikipedia accounts and has a Content Management System which means it will be easy for us to edit. It is impossible to say how much this means to us. We wanted to update the website but could not afford to pay for it to be done professionally. Webdurance is amazing because it gives 6 charities the chance to have a professionally designed and built website - an absolute must today out of the generosity of the companies and individuals taking part. So THANK YOU so much!

Sandcastle Ball

2010-07-12T10:50:00.006+01:00

Last night was the Sandcastle Ball and what a fabulous night we had. A terrific party which went on into the small hours and was enjoyed by everyone. Thank you very much to our two intrepid fundraisers Catrina and Carol.

Among the silent auction prizes was this superb cake made by Giraffes Eat Cake and donated to Children North East. My wife is an amateur cake decorator so she appreciated how much time and skill went into the making of this cake (everything is edible including the 'sand' made from granulated brown and white sugars). Anyway we bid for it and won it. As you can see we got it home without damage but then wondered what to do with it. After all cakes don't last for ever, they go stale and eventually mouldy.

So this morning we took it to our local primary school who had taken part in the Sandcastle Challenge on the beach last week. They were delighted and will be sharing it around as many children as possible today.

Sandcastle Challenge

2010-07-02T16:29:00.029+01:00

We had a great day on Sandhaven beach in South Shields for the 16th annual Sandcastle Challenge. This year there were 1500 primary school age children from schools all over the north east including a couple of special schools. The theme was 'famous landmarks' - there were several Great Walls of China, pyramids, the Sphinx a couple of London Eyes, Hadrian's Wall, several Angels of the North, The Sage, Tyne Bridge and Penshaw. But amongst them some really unusual contructions - Capetown and Robyn Island including the World Cup stadium; Eyjafjallajokull the Icelandic Volcano which even erupted for the judges; Sutton Bank and the White Horse in North Yorkshire and a fabulous depiction of the elaborate door knocker on Durham Cathedral.

Each team can be up to 15 children plus teacher and a professional we match to the school. Professionals are architects, contruction companies, building suppliers etc. We work closely with the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) North East region to organise the event. Professionals and school children work together to decide in advance what they will build and plan how to build it. Then on the day they have just one hour in a designated plot to build the constructions which are then judged. The best 5 receive £200 and an overall professional winner is chosen to be announced at the Sandcastle Ball next Friday.

We get lots of great press and TV coverage which is good for publicity. For example this from The Journal.

More encouraging news

2010-06-24T15:24:00.022+01:00

On Tuesday Catrina Flynn our fundraising manager and I went to London to make a presentation to the national committee of a Charitable Trust and answer questions. Naturally we prepared and rehearsed carefully for the hour long meeting with a panel of 5 people. I am delighted that today we were contacted to say the Trust would like to visit WEYES to satisfy themselves that the project is as good as we said it was and to make a recommendation to the Trust's Board of Trustees to make a grant towards the cost of the WEYES building project.

This really is exciting news. We are not there yet but well on the way to getting some help towards the cost of the building project. I am not going to name the Trust until it is definate but you can tell I am very hopeful.

The 5 people we met in London were very interested in the project and asked intelligent questions (in fact the hour we spent with them rushed by). I think one of the most telling was asking whether it would not be better to do outreach work to young people in need by going to places where they gather like burger bars. There is no Macdonalds, Burger King or Kentucky Fried Chicken in the area where WEYES is and the reason is that the area is not wealthy enough to support businesses like that. And young people are the ones least likely to have money to spend in them even if they did exist. It is easy to forget just how disadvantaged Benwell, Elswick and many other wards in the North East are compared to other parts of the country.

Youth Council elections

2010-06-19T14:59:00.004+01:00

At the start of this year Children North East won a contract from Newcastle City Council to assist young people to set up an independent Youth Council for the city. This work is being managed by WEYES and in time perhaps the Youth Council will have a permanent home in the new WEYES building.

An incredible amount of work has gone on since February so that the first elections to the Youth Council could take place this week. The 'constituencies' had to be set up, candidates recruited, manifestos produced and disseminated, the election published and a voting method established. Young people could vote online or in their school using the actual ballot boxes which are used by adults in local and general elections.

The result of the election was announced at a reception in St. James's Park at lunch time today. The Sheriff of Newcastle congratulated all 50 candidates and gave awards to each and every one of them for putting themselves forward and for taking part. Then the result was announced. Over 8,000 young people had voted - an astonishing result in itself which gives real legitimacy to all the young people elected to 30 places on the Youth Council.

Congratulations to everyone who took part and in particular to all the project staff at WEYES who worked so hard on the election. You can see all the results on the Youth Council website: www.youthelection2010.children-ne.org.uk and here are all the candidates with the Sheriff:

Fifth site meeting

2010-06-10T12:02:00.021+01:00

It is really taking shape now. The site meeting this morning took place in the new meeting room which has been built at the back of the building where there was once just an old garage. It is light, airy and a good size for meetings, group activities or training. You get to it through the kitchen, which has been considerably enlarged and is big enough now to accommodate several small cafe type tables and chairs should the project want to use it that way.

There is a clear hallway all the way through the ground floor so you can see part of the kitchen area from the front door and also, to your right the new recpetion area. All the rooms have a proper shape now. The health room is in the same place as it used to be downstairs at the front of the building, but the room has been restored to its proper proportions which is a big improvement. Upstairs too all the rooms are looking good.

_space have done a terrific job managing the building work so that it will finish as orginally planned in mid July and the total cost will be as planned, just under £300,000 plus VAT even though the work has included things which were not budgetted for like a new roof, repairing the forward leaning parapet at the top of the front wall, restoring the stonework and sorting out the front garden.

By the time of the next site meeting in July the building will be practically complete.

Chlamydia Knickers

2010-06-03T09:11:00.037+01:00

WEYES has a significant contract with Newcastle Primary Care Trust (NHS) to provide sexual health services for young people in the west area of Newcastle. You have probably seen the Chlamydia advertising on the TV, that is because if left untreated it can cause serious problems including infertility and it is the 16-24 age group who are most at risk - 65% of all people who have Chlamydia are in that age range. Each year the PCT and WEYES agree a target number of young people to be screened for Chlamydia and each year it goes up. The NHS in the North East wanted 25% of 15-24 year olds tested in 2009-10, this year they want 35% tested. For WEYES that translates into 1200 young people to be tesetd for the first time in 2010-11 and in particular the PCT want to target young men age 16 to 18 because they are the group least likely to come forward for a test.

Last year the PCT offered free 'Chlamydia knickers' to everyone (girls and boys) who was tested. The knickers have pictures of Chlamydia monsters on them like the advertising and became very popular - a must have fashion item for teenage girls in Newcastle! This year the PCT budget has already been cut so there are no more knickers to give out. Having no incentives for the young people will make the task more difficult to achieve but WEYES has developed an active programme of outreach including involving some young people to promote the sexual health services on offer at WEYES to their contemporaries in places like Newcastle College.

Encouraging news

2010-05-27T08:55:00.035+01:00

For months now we have been applying to charitable trusts for capital grants for the WEYES building project. These things have a long lead in. For most trusts there is no set time to apply nor are there closing dates. You make the application but then have to wait until the people who award the grants have considered it (along with all the other applications they receive) and make a decision. The meetings may not take place until several months after you applied. As far as we can tell most trusts receive many more applications than they can possible make grants to, they have to make choices but it is not clear how they decide between applications. A lot is left to the person applying, we have researched those trusts which say they are willing to support capital projects for young people in the north east of england and applied to those to give ourselves the best chance, but in the end there is a lot of luck involved.

So I am pleased to say that our application to a large national foundation based in London is looking hopeful. First we applied to the North East committee earlier in the year who supported the application and forwarded it to the national committee for consideration. Just this week we have been invited to a meeting in London later in June where we will be asked to make a presentation to support our case and answer questions. This is one of the larger applications we have made so I am particularly hopeful that it will be successful.

Think Pink

2010-05-20T13:05:00.000+01:00

Rob and Diane Charlton, directors of _space architecture and building management in the North East hosted their annual 'Think Pink' charity ball in aid of WEYES at the Marriott Hotel, Gateshead last Friday. It was a fabulous evening hosted by TV personality Wendy Gibson which raised over £20,000 towards the cost of the building programme. To raise so much is an incredible achievement when so many businesses, are struggling in the present economic climate especially in the building industry.

We in Children North East are very grateful to all the people, too numerous to mention who came to the ball and were generous in their support of what we do and our work at WEYES in particular. This big contribution brings the total raised from local sources for the WEYES building project to £85,000 (the target is £100,000 by the end of 2010).

WEYES fundraising website

2010-05-13T10:50:00.000+01:00

_space have launched a new website to support fund raising for the WEYES building project. The front page says 'We are supporting WEYES, will you?' and includes pictures of Tim Healy and Denise Welch at the project when the building work started earlier this year. The website says that WEYES is supported by the _space Foundation.

This launch of the website coincides with the _space 'Think Pink' charity ball tommorrow night which this year is entirely for the WEYES appeal. The website includes photographs of the interior before work started and a virtual tour of how parts of how it will look when it is finished in July.

The website is at: www.weyes.co uk

Fourth site meeting

2010-05-06T13:29:00.000+01:00

Fourth site meeting today. All seems to be going well. Young people from the WEYES project have met an interior designer from _space to select colours. They also chose floor coverings, paving and railings for the front garden. Some of the staff have visited the site too and suggested some minor changes that will create some more storage cupboards from what would have been 'dead' space.

All the windows are in place. The new frames for the old building at the front had to be 'coaxed' into spaces which are no longer 'square' due to the age of the building but look nice and neat. All the stonework on the front is going to be repaired with some 'super substance' which is painted on and fills in the gaps.

The brick parapet on the front is a bit worrying. It leans forward a couple of inches so it is proposed to tie it back with 8 long metal rods secured to the parapet at one end and the roof at the other; but then also drill vertically downwards into the brickwork for a metre or so and insert steel rods there too. We wondered if the old bricks would take that or whether they would crumble. Anyway the plan is to try it and if it looks too dodgey to stop and instead take down and rebuild the parapet reusing the original bricks.

Inside the health rooms are taking shape, the downstairs one in particular at the front looks set to be a lovely room complete with one rounded corner. The upstairs health room also has 'character' - the floor slopes slightly due to the age of the building! The kitchen is a huge room and set to become the heart of the whole place. The new group room in the extension is a good size room too. Upstairs many of the rooms and the stairwell have been plastered. Many of the windows have large, deep sills.

None of the ceilings are in place yet, they are all going to be suspended ones with tiles and they will be put in place at the very end after all the decorating so nothing gets splashed on them.

Up on the roof

2010-04-29T15:03:00.000+01:00

In the last week the roof has gone on to the new large extention at the rear of the building and the roof to the original building has been replaced. It was possible to reuse most of the orginal tiles but some new ones had to be purchased too. You can't see the roof from the ground because it is hidden behind a parapet and behind the parapet is a gulley. The gulley has been replaced too so that the roof will certainly be watertight now. At first we were in two minds about replacing the roof but it was in worse repair than originally thought and has been achieved at no great extra expense.

We share a chimney stack with the property next door, a small tree had sprouted from our side of it which has been removed and some brickwork relaid, Simon of _space who is managing the building project had some photographs taken of the neighbour's chimney for them to decide what they want to do about their side which is also in need of some repair. Apparently builders have a duty of care to neighbouring property owners to do things like that.

Simon is worried about the parapet. From the ground it looks OK but when you get up close, the top couple of feet lean outwards by two inches or so. There could be a danger of the coping stones on the top of the parapet falling. If it leaned inwards it would not matter so much because anything falling would fall into the gulley rather than crashing to the ground. Simon is going to ask the engineer if it is safe enough and if not what could be done about it.

By the time of the next site meeting in a week the windows should have been replaced - gradually the whole project is coming together. Thank you Simon and _space!

A Long Swim

2010-04-22T13:05:00.033+01:00

The Swimathon took place last weekend. It is the biggest fund raising swimming event in the world. The Swimathon is a 5 kilometre swim which people can enter as individuals or as a team. I took part as an individual. The Swimathon takes place in pools all over the UK. I took part in the Sunderland Aquatic Centre which is an Olympic size pool so 5 kilometres was 100 50 metre lengths.

I have done the Swimathon before but not for several years and never in a 50 metre pool which means only half as many 'pushes off the side' and therefore a bit more work than a 25 metre pool. Of course I have been practising and regularly completed half the distance in one hour at a nice steady pace. On the day I was sharing the lane with 5 others all going at different paces, lots of overtaking and slowing down when it was not possible to get past.

So I was very pleased to complete the distance in 2 hours 6 minutes and 8 seconds which is actually a couple of minutes faster than the last time I did it some years ago.

The important thing is the sponsorship - I am delighted to have raised over £600 for the WEYES building project from donations to my Just Giving page, cash and Gift Aid. So a very big thank you to everyone who sponsored me - and there is still time to give, just click the Just Giving button on the right of this page.

Who knows what is next - perhaps the Great North Swim next year (1 mile in the open water of Lake Windermere) - very cold!

Disappointing news

2010-04-15T08:57:00.033+01:00

Earlier this year we made two seperate applications to different rounds of the Social Enterprise Investment Fund. This was money for capital grants to social enterprises and charities from the Department of Health which was managed on their behalf by the Social Investment Business. When we saw the criteria for applications they seemed too good to be true and so timely for the WEYES building project. Writing the applications was time consuming but we got them in on time but then heard nothing.

The orginal specification said decisions would be made by the end of March, as that point came near we phoned the Social Investment Business who said there had been a lot of applications which were taking longer than anticipated to process so the timescale for decisions would be extended. However the person did say that if we had not already been contacted by an assessor it was unlikely that our application would progress any further. This week we received a letter to say we had indeed been unsuccessful. The frustrating thing is that no feed back was offered so we don't know where we went wrong.

By chance there was an opportunity to meet an adviser for the Social Investment Business this week and naturally we took the chance to ask what had happened. It seems the Social Investment Business normally deals with loans not grants and had been overwhelmed by the number of applications so most likely there had simply been too many. That is a reason of sorts but still does not provide any opportunity for us to learn how we might improve our chances of being successful in the future. It was no fault of the adviser that she expected to talk to us (and others) about loans but found herself answering the same point about the SEIF grant to several people.

We are continuing to make applications to Charitable Trusts for capital grants and have quite a few being considered at the present with more being prepared. I hope we will be more successful with them.

Third site meeting

2010-04-08T12:58:00.039+01:00

The third site meeting took place at WEYES this morning. The weather has continued to be kind so progress is ahead of schedule. The huge extension on the back of the building is nearly built and the roofer has started work replacing the tiles on the main roof. Both the old and new roofs will be completed in the next couple of weeks, then the whole building will be weatherproof. After that the weather will not be able to delay progress at all.

Inside, the new walls and some of the ceilings have been put in place and the plasterers have started work from the top of the house. We need to decide colour schemes soon. The _space interior designer will be meeting staff and young people from the WEYES project to work those out. The idea is that the the whole of the inside of the building will be new and up to the minute but we will preserve and restore the outside of the building. _space have taken advice from a conservation expert about the stonework at the front of the building. There will be new windows in the whole place, mostly UPVC but at the front they will be wood in keeping with the age of the building. The company making the new steel fire escape at the back of the building has also offered to replace iron railings at the front of the building - the originals were probably removed during the second world war. We have applied to the Ironmakers Charitable Trust for a grant for that work.

Unfortunately there was another break-in a couple of weekends past, this time the thieves started to remove new copper cabling which had been installed in the attic. It would seem they were disturbed but we are worried they could return and cause more damage. If they do they will be surprised! It is a sad fact that building sites attract thieves and ours is at it's most vulnerable just now until the windows and doors are fitted.

Newcastle Youth Council

2010-04-03T08:45:00.044+01:00

Today's Newcastle Journal launches the Newcastle Youth Council. I have been excited about this since Children North East bid for the contract last November which we won in February. I have not been able to speak about it until now, it is a really important peice of work for us.

Newcastle City Council want to go further than simply having a forum for young people, they actually want a Youth Council that has authority and independence. This is why they looked for an external agency to work with a steering group of young people to help them hold elections and then work with the elected young people to establish how the Youth Council will work. I am delighted that Children North East was chosen for this work. It seems to me it is exactly the sort of advocacy role that we should have and I hope that we will be able to more of it in future.

It seems to me that there are two key issues facing children and young people today, the first is poverty which is so damaging because it affects self-confidence and aspirations; the second is intolerance of young people which I have written about in this blog several times. Many Children North East services try to ameliorate the impact of poverty on families, I would like us to be doing much more to break down the dreadful intolerance that adults have of our young people, the Youth Council is a small start in that direction.

Some history

2010-03-25T09:43:00.005Z

We are very fond of our history in Children North East and often tell the story of how the organisation started in 1891 as a day trip for 120 street children from Newcastle and Gateshead to the fresh seaside air of Whitley Bay. It is a good story repeated in the Chronicle last Saturday.

The past is important and we will be celebrating our 120th anniversary next year, however the present and the future are more pressing. WEYES is Children North East investing in the future of young people in the west of Newcastle, it's an expression of our belief in them.

Northern Chords

2010-03-19T10:26:00.048Z

I was invited to attend the launch of Northern Chords at the Gateshead Hilton last night. It's the second year of the chamber music festival organised by three remarkable young men, all of them still university students. The festival is the brainchild of Jonathan Bloxham who is the Artistic Director. Jonathan is studying the cello at the Guildhall School of Music and appears in all four concerts over the course of this coming weekend.

Chris Stokel-Walker does the publicity including the fabulous festival brochure. Chris is studying English at Newcastle University and has a great way with words. I am very grateful to him for his occassional blogs about Children North East.

The third member of the team is Tom Rowley who is studying at Oxford University and tireless promoter and organiser of the whole festival. All three are former pupils of Newcastle Grammar School. The festival supports Children North East because Carol Taylor our Senior Fundraiser inspired them during her talks at the school about the charity's history.

Last year's festival was the first, an experimental showcase for good chamber music, this year the concept has been extended to include a competition for talented young musicians in schools across Tyneside. The final 10 will compete in a special concert at Newcastle University on Saturday lunchtime and the finalist will appear in the last concert of the festival in the Sage on Sunday evening.

It is fantastic to have a showcase for young musical talent here in the North East. It will be an aspiration and may even set some musicians on a great career. Having met the three fantastic young men behind the festival I have no doubt that we will all be hearing a great deal more of each one of them in the future.

Cash flow

2010-03-11T10:27:00.039Z

We have been talking to the bank about a loan so we can pay _space upfront for the work they are doing at WEYES while we continue to fund raise. We wanted colateral for the loan to be against the value of our head office building. On Monday the bank said they would give us the loan but against our investments. On Tuesday our Board of Trustees Finance Committee thought about the proposal and accepted the idea. This is a relief because it means we can pay the builders and not have to worry about our cashflow.

In the meantime we are applying to charitable trusts asking for help with capital costs. For some months Catrina Flynn, our PR and Fundraising Manager has been researching the hundreds of charitable trusts available to select the ones most likely to be able to help. This has to do with the charitable objectives of each trust for example those that are interested in projects that support young people in the north east of Emgland. Nevertheless some of the possible trusts prefer you to talk to them which is my job to do.

We are still waiting to hear from the Social Investment Business about our applications to the Social Enterprise Investment Fund for capital grants. We are told just to wait, more applications to process than had been expected and the timescales have been extended to enable the assessors to cope.

Second site meeting

2010-03-04T12:38:00.038Z

Our second monthly site meeting at WEYES today. There was a little delay in progress while _space reached agreement with the neighbour about demonlishing the shared wall but the project is back on track again largely due to excellent weather for making foundations! Much of the inside of the building has been taken down to make way for walls for the new room layout. Fortunately nothing worrying was found except for one small area of dry rot in a wooden lintel above a window which can easily be replaced.

The crack I described in my post on 18th February has been fixed and looks very solid. Not only were new courses of bricks used but also mesh in the mortar between the courses. That just need replastering now. A great deal of old plaster has been removed all over the house

The old garage at the back has been demolished and quite a lot of the back of the building. This is to make way for the big extension on the back of WEYES which will have the new kitchen and a large room for group activities. The foundations for the extension have been laid, fortunately they did not have to be quite as deep as first thought and have been approved by the Building Inspector. Blocks have been delivered and the builders were starting to use them to build the extension walls.

When _space got onto the roof it was in a worse condition than had been thought so we have decided to have a new roof rather than repair the old one, seems silly to s'poil the ship for a h'penth of tar'. _space have found a roofing firm who can do it at a very reasonable cost, so when it is finished the whole building will be new.

Lego auction

2010-02-26T09:54:00.052Z

It happened like this. A well wisher retrieved a lot (boxes and boxes full) of Lego from a skip which she donated to Children North East. Our fundraising team had been talking to Northumbria University about student placements in Children North East and fund raising. Why not give over a day during Student Volunteering Week (this week) for students to make things out of Lego which could be auctioned? That is exactly what happened yesterday at the Richard Ling gallery in Gosforth. It has been such an unusual event that there has been plenty of coverage in the local newspapers which is good for everyone involved.

The students spent the day making necklaces, coasters, earrings, Lego flowers in plant pots, The Angel of the North, mobile phone holders and even a cushion and bra decorated with Lego. You might have thought they would be art students, but actually most of them were studying law or journalism. Richard Ling very kindly gave everyone the use of his gallery and hosted a public auction in the evening when all the items were sold.

I am now the proud owner of four highly decorative coasters made from Lego which are on display in my office. We did not make a lot of money but that was hardly the point. Everyone had fun, there was good publicity for all involved, new relationships were made and there is still a lot of Lego left over which we will give to children to play with.