Since 1891, Children North East has been determined to make a difference to the lives of babies, children, and young people throughout the North East of England. We’ve developed this work to the point that it now even extends across other parts of the UK. 

Each year that comes brings new changes and challenges, and each year we reflect on how we’ve addressed them in order to make a difference to young people. So, we’re very pleased to publish our 2022/2023 Impact Report, providing a detailed look at our achievements and the effect they’ve had.

The current climate: our actions in the face of adversity

In the North East and across the UK, we’ve seen policies fail to meet the basic needs of babies, children, young people and their families. The increased demand for our services has been stark, driven by the pressures of the cost-of-living crisis on families, continued cuts to funding for youth work, and the profound impact of COVID-19 on children and young people. 

In response, we’ve increased our policy work. One of the major focuses has been advocating for a basic standard of living for all, including calling on the Government to update benefits in line with inflation and scrap the two-child cap.

Now, we’re fervently campaigning for a national strategy that acknowledges and addresses child poverty (which affects a staggering 4.2 million children in the UK). Meeting the demand for our services and ensuring the stability of our core functions has been no small feat, but it’s one we’ve embraced with determination, creating spaces providing our local communities with the support they desperately need in the current economic climate.

Last March, our Cowgate space saw us open Cafe Hope: a hub for families from the local community to eat, stay warm, access services and build their support networks.

In Northumberland, where some towns have 65% of their households being identified as deprived, we’ve launched a new base to run services. Activities like these helped us grow the reach of our support by 10% this year, with 4,544 individuals accessing our services. 

A few facts and figures

From 2022 to 23, we’ve supported 4,544 individuals (the number of babies, children, young people and parents/carers accessing our frontline services and support, such as counselling, youth groups or family support). This figure represents a 10% increase in relation to last year (2021/22).

We’ve delivered 69 unique services and programmes to support babies, children, young people and families, and we’ve 1,456 in our supporter community engaged with our requests for donations, fundraising, volunteering and other types of support. This figure includes 402 individual fundraisers and 52 organisations who have donated or raised funds on our behalf (not capturing the diverse and wonderful range of groups and individuals who lend a helping hand to our teams). 

Our services and projects span every Local Authority area in the North East, and there are several areas across the UK where we’ve delivered Poverty Proofing® services to organisations.

One-off events – aside from regular services – supported families with respite and community. A much-needed day of fun taking over 70 children, teenagers, parents and carers on a trip to Cullercoats beach was a special highlight. Echoing the trip which started our charity 131 years ago, when founders John Lunn and John Watson took children from the city on a trip to Tynemouth beach to help their health, this was the first visit to the beach for some of the children. It’s an extremely powerful and important experience to provide. 

You can read more about our work supporting families in the Impact Report itself, where you’ll find case studies of specific services.

Improving and empowering young minds

Declining mental health amongst young people in the North East continues to grow year on year. In turn, this creates longer waiting lists for young people to be seen by qualified mental health practitioners, including counsellors and therapists. 

Our counselling team are adept at dealing with high referral rate, keeping waiting time to an absolute minimum (averaging six weeks). Counselling is adapted within different environments, delivering person-centred care. 100% of those accessing counselling stated their mental health has improved. 97% feel they have more strategies and feel more positive about their future.

One example of the impact of our work is our partnering with BU Wellbeing North Tyneside Learning Trust to offer 119 pupils the charity’s BU Wellbeing course: helping children and young people build resilience and develop positive techniques to manage their mental health. 

Gary Munday, Pastoral Guidance Officer at Monkseaton Middle School noted, “The children responded well to sessions, and we saw them grow into it as the weeks built up. The sessions have given students the skills, confidence, and resilience to support them to achieve.” One thing shining through feedback was the positive reflections of the pupils, with one even calling it “absolutely magnificent.”

Fundraising successes

Following pandemic restrictions, 2022-2023 was the first year we’ve seen some normality return to our fundraising calendar. Our supporters were as creative as ever: a 24-hour radio marathon, a challenge walk along Hadrian’s Wall, a zip slide from the Tyne Bridge – not to mention, of course, the iconic Geordie event, the Great North Run. 

Re-building some of our long-standing corporate relationships and developing new partnerships with businesses across the region has also been a real benefit to us. Chosen as Charity of the Year by a number of North East teams, we’ve worked closely with them on a diverse calendar of events – our Annual Fundraising Ball being one. This made a return after a pandemic hiatus, bringing many from our supporter community back together.

A key fundraiser in our work for over thirteen years is the People’s Postcode Lottery (PPL), raising £3.7m in funding by players to date. This year’s support has meant increased stability, ensuring our core functions are able to run smoothly and effectively, as well as keeping lifeline services running between funding contracts; vital support for young people and families has not been disrupted by funder timescales. 

Reaching further, raising more awareness

In 2021, there was significant growth of audiences on social media (11%) and for the newsletter (61%).

The number of website users has remained consistent with previous years, however users are now viewing more pages (by 19%) and are consuming more news and blogs shared by the charity (by 60%). 

As our UK-wide work increased, so did our audiences beyond the North East. Website audiences from London grew from an 8.2% share of visitors in 2021 to 19.6% in 2022.

We also saw the number of men in our audiences increase by 12% as part of a coordinated attempt to reach more dads and male caregivers. Improving accessibility was a key priority in 2022/23: this focus on raising awareness contributed to an increase in the use of our website accessibility support tools, including content translation by 1,230% and reading aid technology by 586%.

Moving forward to next year

View our full Impact Report here.

We’re sure you’ll agree 2022/2023 has been an impactful year for Children North East.

But we won’t stop there.

We won’t stop until every baby, child, and young person has the happy, healthy start in life they deserve. 

Your support means that we can be there when we are needed most. 

If you’re able to donate, fundraise, become a corporate sponsor, or support us in some other way, we’d be extremely grateful. 

Or for further information on our work and projects, get in touch.

Researchers from Newcastle University have identified a link between reducing the stigma of poverty in schools and the reading and maths attainment of pupils.

One in three UK children are currently living in poverty. Whilst the report acknowledges that schools alone cannot tackle poverty, they “can implement policies that tackle the stigma of poverty and ensure that the school day is more equitable”.

The finding comes from the article Does tackling poverty related barriers to education improve school outcomes? which analysed the impact of Poverty Proofing® the school day. The work was led by Dr Morgan Beeson and Professor John Wildman, from Newcastle University Business School, and Dr Josephine Wildman.

Poverty Proofing® the School Day is a nationally recognised programme that works with schools to remove barriers for students living in poverty.

The research team looked at primary schools in the North East, comparing 38 primary schools that had recently undergone Poverty Proofing, to the region’s other 292 primary schools.

They found that pupils from all financial backgrounds benefitted from improvements in attainment. Over a two-year period after schools took action to remove barriers for those living in poverty, scores improved by approximately 5%.

To confirm this trend, the team separately analysed groups of children who received free school meals and therefore most likely to be living in poverty, and those who were not. The research pointed to a potential improvement in engagement in learning as a result of a reduction in disruptions caused by the consequences of poverty.

John Wildman, Professor of Economics at Newcastle University said: “Poverty is a trap that weighs heavily on children. If schools can make sure that poverty is left at the school gate, our results suggest that educational outcomes can improve and perhaps, in the long run, help pupils escape that trap.”

Morgan Beeson, Research Associate at Newcastle University, said: “What makes this research exciting is that by supporting children most impacted by poverty, the school environment can be made better for every child. The substantial impact on children’s learning underscores the urgent need for policy makers to consider interventions like Poverty Proofing.”

The research was funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Applied Research Collaboration (ARC North East and North Cumbria (NENC).

Lorna Nicoll, Operations Lead – Poverty Proofing at Children North East, said: “Every year our teams speak to over 30,000 children, families and staff about the impact finances have on their experiences of the school day. Time and time again we see financial pressures impacting pupils’ opportunity to thrive, whether through hunger, lack of learning resources, bullying or missing out on special moments. It is a huge milestone for researchers to demonstrate the link between our work removing those barriers and the educational outcomes and attendance of children in school.”

Changes schools have made as part of Poverty Proofing include making it harder to identify children accessing free school meals, ensuring that all cost-related support is given discretely, minimising or eliminating curriculum and after school clubs costs and giving families long notice periods about costs so they can financially plan.

Today, we announce a new community experience programme funded by NCS (National Citizen Service) that will support young people from communities across Sunderland, Gateshead, South Tyneside and Durham County.  

The grant is part of a significant £20m funding package that NCS Trust have awarded to organisations across England for the delivery of community-based experiences at a local and grassroots level. 

These new experiences will complement NCS’ existing away from home residential offer by providing more opportunities for teenagers to engage in local activities that foster skills development, deepen their understanding of the community, and empower them to contribute positively to its improvement. The grants will also support organisations that cater to specific groups of young people who may not have participated in previous NCS initiatives.  

In collaboration with the National Youth Agency and StreetGames, NCS assessed more than 400 applications and Children North East was selected as one of around 100 organisations to receive funding.  

The grant will allow Children North East to deliver opportunities for teenagers to engage in local activities that foster skills development, deepen their understanding of the community, and empower them to contribute positively to its improvement. Delivery partners for the programme include Foundation of Light, Durham City Youth Project, Groundwork NE & Cumbria, Go the Distance, Delta North Consett, Our 1 Community, Blue Sky Trust, Newcastle United Foundation with support from The Enterprise Academy, Nourish Food School and National Trust. 

Kate Sandberg, Youth Team Manager, Children North East, said: “There has been a 77% real-terms reduction in funding for youth work since 2011, so the NCS Trust funding is an important opportunity to provide young people with experiences that will help them grow their experiences, networks and aspirations for the future. We are incredibly grateful to NCS, the National Youth Agency and Streetgames for investing in the next generation through this project.” 

Mark Gifford, CEO of NCS Trust, added: “I am delighted to welcome a diverse range of local, grassroots and community organisations from across the youth sector to deliver reimagined NCS experiences. This allows us to reach more young people than ever before, ensuring they are equipped with the skills and perspective to become work ready and world ready. Additionally, our grants for targeted experiences will enable us to reach underserved young people and communities.” 

Gifford added, “Together, we will work towards creating a country of confident, connected, caring citizens where everyone feels at home.” 

Over the past decade, more than 800,000 young people have benefitted from an NCS experience, dedicating over 18 million hours to community based social action, while gaining invaluable life experiences. 

For more information about the programme and how to get involved in opportunities local to you, please contact Una Mac Dermott (NCS Project Coordinator) at [email protected]. 

The general election gives us the opportunity for a major reset by the next government, to ensure our society properly invests in the next generation and tackles once and for all the barriers getting in the way of a happy childhood. 

An Investment Not a Cost: Putting children at the heart of the next Government is our briefing for members of the next Government and those informing policymaking. It provides insights and data and sets out what actions government needs to take to support happy, healthy young lives within families, school and communities. 

Summary of our call on the next Government  

In summary, the top priorities for the next government, for both legislation and investment must be: 

• Tackling Child Poverty, including delivering a national, cross-departmental strategy to tackle child poverty and reform the Universal Credit system.

• Prioritising mental wellbeing, including properly resourcing children’s mental health provision to remove long waits and rolling out Early Support Hubs in all communities nationally. 

• Strengthening families, including addressing access to childcare during school holidays for working parents, early education that provides the best outcomes for children, and early intervention for families who are struggling. 

• Giving all young people the chance to thrive, including ensuring all children and young people have access to education appropriate to their needs and eliminating long waits for assessments for children presenting with neurodivergent needs .  

• Enabling happy childhoods, including sustainable funding for youth services that are available to all young people all year round and ensuring children have safe spaces to play. 

Download: An Investment Not a Cost

CEOs are putting their leadership to the test as they come together to take on a daring Firewalk Challenge in support of local charity, Children North East. 

Leigh Elliott, Chief Executive of Children North East and Sam Allen Chief Executive of the NHS North East and North Cumbria ICB, are proving their bravery to raise funds and awareness for the charity, which supports over 4,500+ people each year with services such as counselling, youth work and help for families in crisis. 

The pair are calling on other leaders from across the region to ‘show their teams what they’re made of’ and join them in the unique challenge; which takes place on 7th March at Crowne Plaza, Newcastle. 

Sam commented, “I’m excited to be taking in part this challenge on behalf of Children North East. Whilst walking the hot coals may be daunting, it’s nothing compared to the obstacles faced by the children the charity work with, who bravely face circumstances such as food poverty, domestic abuse and mental health difficulties.”  

Firewalks, often associated with traditional spiritual ceremonies, involve participants walking over a path of hot embers. Whilst they are safe, they demonstrate the power of mindset to overcome challenges. 

Leigh commented, “It’s inspiring that Sam, who leads an NHS workforce of 170,000 people, is taking part in this challenge. It demonstrates a real commitment to supporting local communities. Everyone who is joining the Firewalk is doing something very special that will help change the lives of babies, children and young people in the region.” 

If you would like to sign-up for the Firewalk Challenge, you can register for your place online.

If you would like to sponsor Sam and Leigh, you can go so via their JustGiving page.

Children North East is thrilled to share that Newcastle United player James Huntley, is working with the charity as an ambassador. 

 A homegrown football talent, James has over 50 matches under his belt with the youth squad and recently scored the winning goal in their recent Hong Kong Citi Soccer Sevens cup campaign, which took them to the semi-finals. 

Off the pitch, James will join the region’s longest standing children’s charity to spend time with the young people accessing the services and raise awareness about the challenges faced by its communities, such as how sport and time outside is important for teens mental health. 

The partnership is important to the charity as it seeks to work with young voices, who understand what it’s like to be young today for the 2,000+ children and teens they work with each year.  

From a family passionate about giving back, James’ brother Liam is also supporting the charity by running this years’ Great North Run in support of their work. 

James commented, “I’m excited to be teaming up with Children North East and learning more about the young people they work with. Growing up can be hard and I am pleased to be able to support the great work of the charity in this way. Football, and sport in general, is something which unites people whatever their background and so I hope we can use that to make a positive impact… as long as they don’t put me in goal.” 

Leigh Elliott, Chief Executive at Children North East, comments, “As an athlete, James has accomplished a huge amount and has worked very hard to get there. Through spending time with young people we work with he will be able to share his experience and help them in growing their confidence. We hope this new relationship inspires other young people to support their communities.”