Family Friendly
The Department for Education is supporting our Family Friendly scheme which assists a range of organisations, both local and national, as they assess and develop their family friendly services. Family Friendly sees us working in partnership with Gingerbread, the Fatherhood Institute, Grandparents' Plus, Contact a Family and Action for Prisoners' Families.
Family-focused charity coalitions
We have been awarded funding by the Department for Education to strengthen UK family life by working within two major coalitions of family charities:
1. The Family Services Strategic Partnership
This is led by Barnardo’s in partnership with Action for Prisoners Families, Children England, and the Family and Parenting Institute. The strategic partnership will work with our member networks, stakeholder groups and the wider families voluntary and community sector to understand what already works well at a local level to develop a network of support across the country and provide a voice for the sector and families. It will ensure that frontline expertise and experience informs policy development and future government planning.
To find out more about the Family Services Strategic Partnership please contact:
Barnardo’s: Kerstin Neason – Kerstin.neason@barnardos.org.uk
Children England: Kathy Evans - kathy@childrenengland.org.uk
Action for Prisoners Families: Debbie Cowley - deborahcowley@actionpf.org.uk
Family and Parenting Institute: Peter Grigg - peter.grigg@familyandparenting.org
2. Growing Our Strengths.
This is led by Action for Children in partnership with the Family and Parenting Institute, Action for Prisoners Families and Family Action. The partnership is working with the voluntary and community sector (VCS) to help to ensure that providers are able to work skilfully with vulnerable families by offering the right support at the earliest possible stage to prevent family problems from escalating. It also aims to enable the VCS to get together and share both its knowledge and skills to learn about and promote the use of outcomes and best practices in early intervention work and services for families.
To find out more about the Growing our Strengths project, please contact:
yan-shing.chang@familyandparenting.org
Previous government backing
The Parenting Fund
FPI ran the Parenting Fund from 2004 to 2011 on behalf of the Department for Education (formerly the Department for Children, Schools and Families). The fund disbursed over £40 million in grants to 354 charities and ‘not for profit’ organisations, providing services that support work with parent’s families and children in 23 priority local authority areas.
