About Welcare
Welcare is a Christian child and family support charity and they work with parents and children in South London and East Surrey. Welcare strives to empower families and change lives for the better, offering practical and emotional support to overcome challenges. The children and families they support face difficult situations due to domestic abuse and parental conflict, mental health, emotional and well-being issues, social isolation or the challenges caused by low income and the cost-of-living crisis.
Welcare offers individual family support, and group work programmes including parenting groups, Caring Dads and Capability In Schools, an early intervention programme for children with emerging emotional and social support needs.
Welcare's Challenges
A common theme for most small/medium sized charities is fundraising, generating the income to maintain our services let alone extend them in the face of increasing demand including:
- Rising Levels of Child Poverty
High living costs combined with stagnant wages and reduced access to benefits, are pushing more families into financial hardship. This economic pressure often translates into basic needs not being met, such as food, clothing, and stable housing, all of which affect children’s development and well-being. - Increasing Incidence of Domestic Abuse and Local authorities have reported rising numbers of cases, including those involving children either as direct victims or witnesses. The trauma caused by domestic abuse can have long-term impacts on children’s emotional and mental health, requiring specialist support that many charities struggle to provide due to limited resources and funding.
- Children’s Emotional Health and Wellbeing and growing recognition of the challenges facing children’s emotional and mental health, with increasing numbers of young people experiencing anxiety, depression, and behavioural issues. Contributing factors include social media influences, family breakdown, and the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. Many statutory services are overstretched, leaving family support charities to fill the gaps, often without adequate capacity or access to specialist expertise.
These challenges place considerable strain on family support charities like Welcare which operate with limited or fixed funding and increasing demand ad overhead costs. To effectively support children and families they aim to focus on prevention and early intervention.
Welcare's Achievements
Welcare staff work alongside parents to give children secure and confident childhoods and to enable them to thrive in the future. In the last year they worked with 838 families by offering practical and emotional support to overcome challenges and change lives for the better. To achieve this, they:
- Support children and families to have nurturing relationships free from harm
- Support children and families to feel connected to their local community
- Increase family resilience and improve parenting skills to enable children to experience effective parenting
- Support young people and parents to increase their health and emotional development
- Encourage participation in our group work programmes to promote self-care skills, independence, self-esteem and resilience
- Support children and parents to recover from domestic abuse and develop strategies to prevent abuse in future relationships
- Provide practical support and access to emergency funding to meet immediate needs and improve family well-being
During the year they received referrals from many sources including schools, children’s services and health service providers. Reasons for referral included child and parent emotional wellbeing, domestic abuse, and low self-esteem.
Welcare families received additional support, sourced by Welcare staff, in the form of supermarket vouchers, household items, support with utility costs, school and warm clothes and access to counselling worth £41,116 in value.
Welcare
Donate to Welcare, or check out their social media channels below!