NSPCC Cymru reveals how it survived lockdown to still be here for children as it takes steps towards recovery

• NSPCC Cymru partially reopening its three service centres so in-person work can resume
• Children’s charity to offer a blend of virtual and face-to-face sessions
• New way of working will help charity support more families across the whole of Wales

“I can remember the call I received on March 17 2020 as if it was yesterday – exit from your service centres, support all staff to be able to work remotely and review all of your cases and inform the people we support of our next steps. I thought that was the hard bit but I was so wrong,” recalls Tracey Holdsworth who oversees NSPCC Cymru’s direct service delivery across Wales.

The charity delivers five different direct services to children, young people and families from its sites in Swansea, Prestatyn and Cardiff and since the start of the year has been offering a pan Wales service that helps to keep children safe online.

Tracey says: “The reality of what we all experienced over the coming months is something that we could never have anticipated and prepared for but despite the challenges I am so proud of the staff in Wales who rose to the challenge with a firm intent to continue to be there for children.

“We developed and learned at rapid speed how to continue our delivery of services over virtual platforms and were surprised by skills that we never knew we had – innovation and motivation were the cogs that kept the wheels turning.”

For six months NSPCC Cymru’s service centres remained closed, with children’s service practitioners adapting the way in which they offer crucial services to ensure local families did not go without support during lockdown.

This included services over the phone and online. However, in some cases this was not an option, and with updated government guidance the charity is partially reopening its service centres in the north and south of the country, so that priority face-to-face work can continue with the families it serves.

As lockdown restrictions ease, NSPCC Cymru is sharing how it plans to balance the needs of the children, young people, and their families it supports with the social distancing measures in place to combat the global pandemic – changing elements of its work, so that it can offer such services in a safe environment.

Tracey says: “Now we have a new opportunity – emerging from the constraints of lockdown to a new approach to our work where we can return to supporting face to face delivery of our services, whilst keeping a virtual element that allows us to reach more families than before.

“What we’ve found is that as well as some challenges we have found new and innovative ways of working together to support families, and we must now embed that into a new way of working as restrictions ease.

“Our commitment to support as many children and their families as possible through the delivery of direct services is our golden thread. My team of staff across Wales have lots of unique skills, experience and talents but the one thing we all share is our passion to do our very best for children and our belief that every child matters.”

Extensive work has been undertaken to ensure the charity’s service centres are in line with government guidelines, and staff have worked tirelessly to reconsider and reconfigure how frontline practitioners can safely support families in person at the service centres.

Tracey says: “This is our chance to reinvent and create a better world where we can all work, rest and play in the new normal. We cannot re-write the chapters of history already past, but we can learn from them, evolve and adapt. The new normal may even be a better normal, certainly a different normal.

“As we approach this next phase it is filled with optimism and excitement – whilst virtual working has served and will continue to serve a purpose in the delivery of services, the ability to see the face of the child and hear their voice in the same room adds the subtlety of human interaction that cannot be experienced across Zoom, Microsoft Teams or the telephone.”

This is particularly important for services such as Letting the Future In, which the NSPCC offers in Prestatyn, delivering specialist therapeutic support for young people aged 4-17 years old who have been sexually abused.

During lockdown the charity has seen a record number of contacts to the NSPCC’s Helpline with concerns for a child. More than 22,000 adults contacted the NSPCC helpline in April, May and June, with parental behaviour, neglect and physical and emotional abuse the biggest worries. Over 700 of these calls had to be referred to external agencies in Wales for further action.

Childline and NSPCC helpline bases have remained open throughout the pandemic so that the charity’s key workers can safely be here for children when they need it most, including Childline bases in Cardiff and Prestatyn.

Tracey says: “The global pandemic has had a huge impact on how we work as a charity and as restrictions lift we’re looking at how we move forward.

“We shifted from working face-to-face with children, young people and their families, to providing an exclusively virtual service.

“This raised questions about how children and families were responding to digital services and how to manage safeguarding risks online.

“What we’ve found is that as well as some challenges such as digital poverty and digital fatigue we have found new and innovative ways of working together to support families, and we must now embed that into a new way of working as restrictions ease.”

The number of face-to-face sessions in a day will be limited at each service centre and all therapy rooms have been redesigned allowing for more physical distancing and will be cleaned and sanitised following a session.

Typically, therapy play rooms would have multiple toys and equipment and this has been replaced with a box of toys for each individual child so that toys can be rotated and sanitised before the next use.

The pandemic has been difficult for everyone, although children have been the hidden victims – suffering abuse and neglect at home, increased risk online, or further pressures on their mental health.

The NSPCC will remain on the frontline, helping children cope and recover, and empower the adults in their lives to support and protect them, at a time when they too may be under immense pressure.

To keep up-to-date on the challenge ahead for the NSPCC as it moves from crisis to recovery, how the charity is tackling it so that it’s still here for every child, and how to get involved sign up to the charity’s hand-raiser.