The seasoned campaigner

The 1800s are an unexpected place to begin a conversation about the current difficulties faced by children and families. But David Holmes is acutely aware of the heritage of the organisation he now leads. A month into the job, Holmes talks passionately about the 150-year long legacy of Family Action. An image of its founder, the Victorian social reformer Octavia Hill, hangs above his shoulder. “I don’t think the need for family support has diminished at all in those 150 years – the need is still as acute as ever,” he says.

Items of period furniture remain in Holmes’s office. A painting of its grand former headquarters on Buckingham Palace Road adorns one wall. An ornate bookshelf houses every copy of the Charities Register and Digest from 1882 to 1999 – a journal published by Family Action when it was known as the Charity Organisation Society. But the office’s splendour is confined to these few items. Located on a noisy high street in Hackney, London’s most deprived borough, the rest is modern flat-pack. It is more representative of the austere situations Family Action’s clients face.

Holmes left the British Association for Adoption and Fostering in March after seven years at the helm. He says it was time for a change. “This is an opportunity to work earlier on intervention and family support. That’s an exciting change,” he says. Holmes speaks confidently about what the organisation can achieve, despite the financial challenges of the third sector and the anticipated rise in family welfare needs as a result of government funding cuts. His predecessor, Helen Dent, led the organisation for 16 years. In her farewell message, she said she would leave Holmes a “strategy for growth”.

Growth action plan
“Family Action is growing,” says Holmes, who describes the organisation as “stable” and “looking to take on additional services”. One example is to take over children’s centres when contracts come up for tender, to add to the organisation’s current 25. The majority of Family Action’s funding is now generated through delivering statutory services for local authorities, Holmes says.

He is keen for Family Action’s 100-plus nationwide services to help the most disadvantaged families, but is particularly concerned about those who will be missed by government initiatives, such as the troubled families programme. “It’s important that services are sufficiently flexible to be able to respond to whatever the needs might be,” says Holmes. “They don’t always fall neatly into the parameters of programmes.”