HSC partners with early years charity Bright Beginnings
The Health & Social Care Committee has announced another charity partnership, and said it is keen to work with more third sector partners.
Last week a partnership with mental health charity Mind was confirmed, while this week it was early years charity Bright Beginnings.
HSC is providing a one-off £60,000 grant to enable the children’s charity to continue delivering services this year.
‘Bright Beginnings is another example of an excellent local charity that provides invaluable services to our community and does so at such a crucial time for children and caregivers,’ said charity sector political lead Heidi Soulsby.
‘We need to see that across the services being provided by the States – it a great example of a partnership of purpose.’
She added that working with the third sector added a huge amount of knowledge and experience.
‘I feel more enthused talking about this than other stuff that I do, because it’s real,’ she said.
‘We’ve got people who are helping us, and we’re not having to think that we’ve got all the answers, because we know that the answers will come from people working together.’
And people who said the States should not be turning to the third sector but providing services themselves she said, were the same ones that say government should be smaller.
‘But it’s not about that, it’s about finding who are the best people to provide those services,’ she said.
‘You’re sometimes dealing with some people who are quite vulnerable and actually don’t want to be involved with or be in communication with government.’
Deputy Soulsby said Bright Beginnings provided vital support to islanders through pregnancy, birth and beyond.
While the charity runs a nursery and preschool, as well as a literacy programme, this funding would be specifically aimed at supporting the work of its Children’s Centre, which provides support from conception to age four.
‘We now have an opportunity to consider what we want these services to look like going forward so that they can best support our children and families,’ she said.
‘This is a discussion we need to have with organisations like Bright Beginnings, on a co-design basis, given their expertise and passion for the work they do.
‘This has the potential to add to the many commissioned services we already have in place which exist as partnerships between the States and the charity sector for the benefit of islanders.’
Bright Beginnings chairwoman Rachel Copeland said the HSC grant would allow the charity to keep providing early help to families.
‘We were founded in response to the 1,001 Critical Days Agenda and all our services are linked to our vision that every child has the best start in life,’ she said.
‘There is now a huge body of research that shows that what happens to a child in those very early years have a significant impact on their future prospects, happiness, well being, employability and their ability to make relationships.
‘So any support that we can give to parents and families in those early years will enable that child to have the best start in life.’
