Free to Be Kids
Growing children's emotional health
We believe that children thrive best in
Our policy structure:
Like all organisations working with vulnerable groups, we have robust policies around safeguarding, confidentiality, boundaries and other key considerations in constructing safe working practices. Our Child Protection & Safeguarding policy is available here.)
Our legally defined purpose as a charity is to provide support for vulnerable children who are in need. Our charitable purpose, aims and powers are defined within our constitution, a copy of which is available here.)
Our values - we believe in:
We are a young, modern charity that believes in doing the small things well, whilst being ambitious in our aim of helping develop and support new ways of working.
Our values and beliefs are integral to how we make decisions and think about the charity's evolution and growth. They underpin all of our policies and serve to keep us focussed on acheiving what our children deserve.
In working with children:
An overt focus on the emotional world and emotional literacy. Projects & mentoring should not be based on activity provision only but should use shared activity to facilitate the exploring, naming and managing of emotional challenges and responses.
We work relationally - through the medium & nature of relationships. Rooted in attachment theory, we believe relationships need investments of time and shared experience to build. Requiring commitment & emotional availability from ourselves.
Using food, art, cooking in groups, drama and more, to share experiences and be alongsided young people. We believe in creativity and expression.
Doing the small things well. We do not need to be big to make a lasting difference to an individual child. But we do need to ensure the details and quality of all we provide. We believe in services with depth, not simply signposting.
Our most powerful support is the energy, passion, innovation and perseverance readily invested by volunteers who are there because they care. With structure, support and safeguards, its value is immeasurable.
Evaluation, outcomes and proof of change are vital but we evaluate to improve, not to prove. Families' own accounts will be the most accurate witness to our work. But using evidenced means to assess our own impact allows us to reflect and have new conversations with children & parents around how we can make the best difference for them.
Creating a sense of adventure, exploration and excitement. We believe activities with these qualities open up minds and are powerful opportunities for bonding and growth. All children should experience feeling adventurous.
Children we work with lead challenging lives with few simple solutions. However restricted time or resources, they deserve our careful, reflective, analytical thought and effort to understand the complexity of their situations. Indeed, this is often the best intervention.
The inherent power of taking young people into the outdoors. The value of helping children spend time with animals. Building on these foundations therapeutically to facilitate social and emotional growth.
Envisioning everything we do from the child's perspective, before we do it. From project design to conversations with individual children this improves everything we do.
Robust governance & management. Effective policy and structure are crucial and so should be clear, simple and sensible. Structure should simplify our work, not complicate it. Ultimately it is people that change lives, not flowcharts.
Clarity about how we work and why, what we achieve and for whom. Openness about our practices and projects based around young people's need, not funding streams. With hard work, we will find funding if our work with families is of value.