About us

What do we do?

The Children’s Society is an expert service provider that delivers outcomes to meet your priorities for families, children and young people. Through close partnership in working with our funders, along with our local knowledge and expertise, we provide innovative solutions that deliver outcomes that maximise the impact of your available funding.

We are passionate about our work. We work with you in a transparent and flexible way. We are fully committed to meeting agreed outcomes every time. We have worked alongside service commissioners in local authorities and the wider public sector for over 125 years. We currently provide services to over 60 local authorities across the UK. We have experience in a comprehensive range of services that are tailored to meet individual needs. Our work spans from prevention through to intensive targeted support services.

The Children’s Society’s Include Programme offers information, training and support to both statutory and voluntary sectors working to support children and young people who care for parents or siblings who suffer from chronic illness or disability. We campaign for change and promote best practice with central and local government and work in partnership with social workers, teachers and health care professionals to deliver solutions that consider the needs of the whole family.

The aim of the Include Programme is to develop a National Focus for young carers, their families and those who work to support them and to promote common standards and to work towards realisation of equitable services, all of our work is informed by  consultation with young carers and their families and those who work to support them.

This is achieved through several complimentary strands of work:

The Prevention through Partnership Programme, funded by the Department for Education, which is currently working to develop a whole family support for families affected by Parental Mental Ill Health and/ or Parental Substance Misuse where a child is at risk of taking on an inappropriate caring role through the delivery of multi-agency capacity building days for Local Authorities across England.

Hampshire Young Carers Initiative‌, funded by Hampshire County Council, is working across Hampshire with Adults and Children's Service, Education, Health Services, Youth Offending Teams, Youth Inclusion and Support Panels, the Police, agencies working within drug & alcohol use/misuse, the Youth Service and other voluntary agencies in order to develop models of good practice across Hampshire.

Young Carers in Focus is funded by the Big Lottery Fund and is being delivered by The Children's Society, in partnership with DigitalME, YMCA Fairthorne Group, Rethink Mental Illness and The Fatherhood Institute. It aims to develop an England-wide network of Young Carers Champions who can raise of the needs of young carers and their families locally and nationally, inputting into consultation and working to increase joined up whole family working for young carers and their families. This programme is also developing a safe social network for young carers across England through the Makewaves site www.makewav.es/ycif

The national family inclusion project‌ which incorporates:

The Refugee Toolkit‌, by The Children’s Society Family Health Inclusion Project funded by the Department of Health. This is an online tool for all adult and children’s services practitioners, education, health and other agencies in contact with refugee and asylum seeking families, particularly those working with families affected by ill-health and disability and where there are young carers. The Department of Health Opportunities for Volunteers fund is now enabling us to deliver training to volunteers using the Refugee Toolkit.

The Engage Toolkit supports black and minority ethnic young carers and family carers – including adults and children’s services, Health, Education and the voluntary sector – and anyone providing services to families affected by ill health and disability.

Funded by the Department of Health, this brings together information and resources and links to help develop and implement best policy and practice for services to support black and minority ethnic young carers and family carers

Change for Families Affected by HIV: Supporting young carers in families affected by HIV. This toolkit has been funded by the Elton John Aids Foundation and provides information, resources and good practice guidance about supporting young carers affected by HIV.