DfE-funded care initiative to recruit 100,000 volunteers to expand nationwide

Safe Families For Children UK has previously received £2m from the Department for Education’s Innovation Fund. It told CYP Now it is hoping for more government cash to help it grow.

Details of the plans come less than a week after CYP Now reported that the DfE has committed to continuing to fund the Innovation Programme.

The charity, which was established in Britain in 2013 by motoring industry millionaire Sir Peter Vardy, has an existing network of 2,000 volunteers and works with 20 councils in England. It plans to expand this to 100,000 volunteers nationwide by 2025.

The initial DfE funding, which was matched with £2m from Vardy, covered the period April 2015 to March 2016. In addition to further government cash, the charity is hoping to attract money from charitable trusts and donations.

The programme was first launched in Chicago 13 years ago and sees volunteers provide respite support, friendship and mentoring to families in crisis. So far, as part of the UK pilot, a total of 462 families with 1,076 children have been supported. This includes 914 bed nights provided by host families.

As well as host families, other volunteer roles include "family friends" who support parents and provide mentoring. There are also "resource" volunteers who can provide goods and services to the family.

Councils that agree to work with Safe Families for Children volunteers are given access to their services for the first year for free. They are then asked to make a small annual contribution afterwards.

The charity hopes its work will help reduce the looked-after children population by at least 10 per cent a year.

Vardy said: “Statistics about children in care always make for depressing reading. Young people who have been in care are less likely to do well in school and they’re more likely to end up in the prison system.

“But we firmly believe that by intervening early, as soon as a family starts to have a problem, we can prevent the situation from escalating to such a point that a child has to go into care.

“If more local authorities, and more volunteers, come on board, we can roll out Safe Families even further to ensure children, who were once at risk of going into care, can stay with their families in a safer, happier home environment.”

In Chicago the programme has helped more than 25,000 families and contributed to cutting the number of children in care by 50 per cent.