Kidscape Campaign 5

Our vision

Our vision is for all children to grow up in a world free from bullying and harm, with adults who keep them safe and help them to reach their full potential.

Our mission is to provide children, families, carers and professionals with advice, training and practical tools to prevent bullying and protect young lives.

The importance of our work

Research by the Department for Education has shown that at least one child in every class is bullied on a daily or weekly basis.

Bullying is the repetitive, intentional hurting of one person or group by another person or group, where the relationship involves an imbalance of power.

Bullying behaviour can take many forms, often in combination – such as verbal, physical, emotional or cyberbullying. Bullying is a child protection issue by law, and we all have a legal duty to keep children safe from bullying and harm.  

Bullying is devastating for young lives. Anxiety, depression, self harm and suicidal ideation are common amongst children who experience bullying, and the negative effects can be felt long into adult life, affecting academic achievement, relationships and long term mental and physical health.

We give hope and help to thousands of children and families each year and work with communities throughout England and Wales to help keep children safe. 

The impact of our work

There are five main ways that we reduce the impact of bullying and harm:

• Building communities of support
• Reducing isolation and loneliness
• Promoting positive relationships
• Supporting resilience and wellbeing
• Helping children recognise and respond to bullying behaviour.

See Impact for details of what we deliver and how it changes young lives. 

Our values

• We believe that every child has the right to live life free from bullying and harm
• We believe that all adults have a responsibility for creating safe and nurturing environments for children
• We value the role of parents and carers and work with them to keep children safe
• We believe that by working together we can protect more young lives and actively encourage partnership work

Our response to Covid-19 

Covid-19 has had a significant impact on all areas of life.  As a charity our priority is keeping children safe from bullying and harm, both now and in the future.  We worked quickly to adapt our services to meet the needs of children and families. This has included:

• Providing virtual delivery of our ZAP programme for children and families
• Providing virtual delivery of key training for the children’s workforce (including safeguarding, online safety and peer mentoring)
• Extending our reach to children and families through partnership work with other charities, support from our Patrons and Ambassadors and additional content and support through social media platforms (e.g Elmer the Patchwork Elephant family support campaign)
• Working in partnership with other charities and partners to keep children safe online (e.g. Qustodio and Report Harmful Content) 

Help us continue to change young lives. Donate today or email info@kidscape.org.uk if you have ideas of ways we could work together. 

Black Lives Matter: the role of Kidscape

Our vision is for all children to grow up in a world safe from bullying and harm, with adults who keep them safe and help them reach their full potential. Whilst we have spent decades campaigning for the safety and protection of all children, we must work harder to raise awareness of all forms of racism,  racist bullying and discrimination, and to increase our accessibility and support to Black children and families throughout England and Wales.

It is vital that Black children and their families know about us, feel we understand and represent them, and have confidence that we will do all in our power to support them.

The staff and Trustees have reflected on our position.  We feel passionately that as a team we can and must do more, and have made the following commitments to ensure long-term change within our organisation:

• Improve staff training. We will provide bias training and seek further learning opportunities to ensure staff and volunteers can identify our own prejudices and participate in an open culture where we feel able to challenge one another, to listen, to learn and to grow.  We will be proactive in educating ourselves and recognise that this process may feel uncomfortable as we examine our own privilege.

• Take active steps to encourage and increase diversity in our staff team, our volunteers, our freelance staff and our Patrons and Ambassadors. We will analyse our current recruitment practices (for both paid and volunteer staff) including our Equality and Diversity monitoring data to identify system barriers and bias. We have taken steps to increase diversity on our board of Trustees over the last two years, will continue to see greater diversity through our Patrons and Ambassadors and will push forward with action to increase diversity in our paid and volunteer staff.

• Challenge racism and discrimination in our society. We will seek collaboration with others who share our values to challenge racism and discrimination in schools, our communities and online, including through our membership of the Anti-Bullying Alliance Race and Faith Advisory Group.

• Support children to challenge racism and discrimination. We will work with children and families to understand and identify racist and prejudicial behaviour, the impact it has, and how we can take action to stop it. We will review our current programme and training materials to ensure we include the experience and impact of racism, and that we give the right support to children and families impacted by racist bullying.

• Work together to keep children safe. We will continue to seek opportunities to work with children, families and professionals in the Black community (acknowledging the huge variety of background and experience) so we can ensure our support is representative and accessible and that together we are doing all in our power to keep children safe from bullying and harm.

• Actively promote equality of race in all of our programmes, materials, training and services.  This includes ensuring that the language, images and stories we use are inclusive and reflect Black family life and experience. 

• Extend the reach of our Community Leader training. We will actively seek opportunity and funding so we can extend our Community Leader training to adults who are from, or support Black communities throughout England and Wales. We will also analyse our current areas of delivery to ensure we have approriate demographic representation.

• Increase our accessibility to Black children and families. We will continue to collect data on the ethnic background of our service users by geographical region and take steps to address where there is underrepresentation from Black children and families. We will continue to work in partnership with Music, Fatherhood and Football to support Black parents and carers and will continue to actively seek partnerships and collaborations with influencers and organisations that represent and reach Black children and families.