National Children’s Bureau 20/21 review

The National Children’s Bureau brings people together to bring about the best for the UK’s children and young people. We strengthen the ecosystem of support and services that exists to help them grow up safe, secure and happy.

For the past year, we have been working flat out to help keep this ecosystem alive, providing training and support to over 60,000 practitioners and nearly 10,000 parents. The demand for our services has risen significantly as the children’s sector workforce turned to us for practical resources, training and access to evidence and research. We couldn’t do this without your support.

With increased pressure on families already struggling to cope and chronic strain on services already reeling from a decade of cuts, we have worked proactively with partners and policymakers to identify gaps and unmet needs and find solutions to protect our children’s welfare.

From conducting research on the impact of the pandemic on babies to shaping support for vulnerable young people unable to access vital services, we have brought every inch of our policy and practice expertise to bear on stopping childhoods from being disrupted and life chances from being derailed.

Alongside this, we’ve continued to work in every region of the UK to deliver changes that make childhood better, driving improvements to the services children count on and developing the skills and knowledge of the children’s workforce.

Taking the voices of children and young people to the heart of Government has long been a central feature of our work, and this year we seamlessly shifted to online collaboration working with 1,300 young people giving this part of our work a whole new dimension.

As Young NCB member Bethan put it, after giving evidence at the Education Select Committee:

“My living room became the House of Commons! The feeling after being able to speak to these MPs for over an hour was indescribable.

“In a year where I should have had the most certainty and power over my life; I’ve had to choose university courses based on unis I’ve never seen apart from via a screen; I’ve had to study and do tests online and battle internet issues or distractions from across my house.

“That zoom call gave me hope for the future.”

There were several moments during the year when children and young people entered the House of Commons, Stormont or other places of influence, direct from their living rooms or bedrooms, from meetings with Minister Ford to presenting evidence to the All Party Parliamentary Group for Children about their experience of the pandemic, as part of our Children at the Heart campaign. Through this campaign, we brought together 150 partner organisations in England and 50 organisations in Northern Ireland to raise their voices with children and young people to call for children to be at the heart of Government decision-making, both in response to the pandemic and beyond.

Together we are setting out a bold, new vision of childhood.

Your donations transform our capacity to achieve this vision. Thank you for your support.

Annamarie is a Director at the Childlife member charity, the National Children’s Bureau.