- United for a Better Childhood: Building Brighter Futures is a new five-year strategy to support NCB in its aim to build better childhoods for every child
- NCB promises to “push further and do better”
- Newest family member Research in Practice a key component in increasing impact and achieving strategic goal
- NCB pledges to deepen and expand its networks, ground more influencing work in own learning and reearn the trust of disabled children and their families
The National Children’s Bureau (NCB) is thrilled to publish our new five-year strategy, United for a Better Childhood: Building Brighter Futures, which sets out the key areas of focus to support its mission to build better childhoods for every child.
For 60 years, NCB has united individuals and organisations across every area of children and young people’s lives, combining cutting-edge research with the voices of lived experience to improve the complex, interconnected systems that support every child to thrive.
Our impact has been built on our ability to learn and evolve and this new strategy lays out how we will push further and do better, with children today facing challenges of an unprecedented variety and scale, including discrimination, stretched public services and an explosion in the numbers of people aged under 18 experiencing mental health issues and life below the poverty line.
We will deepen and expand our networks in a spirit of openness and collaboration. We will do more to ground our influencing work in our own learning to achieve even more for children. We will continue to listen to the voices and experiences of all children, particularly those who face the greatest challenges and whose needs are least met. And we will move forward as a larger and more impactful organisation, welcoming Research in Practice into the NCB family.
All parts of NCB, including our newest member, share core values and ambitions for children and young people and the new strategy sets out how this larger NCB family will achieve them working in partnership with experts from across the sector.
At a time when too many children and young people in England and Northern Ireland face myriad challenges to their physical and mental wellbeing, the National Children’s Bureau is setting out its vision for the next five years to build brighter futures for every child. Is our vision possible? Absolutely. Will it happen tomorrow? No. But that can never be an excuse not to push further and to do better for children. With NCB’s approach to tackling seemingly intractable problems and a stronger voice for children themselves, change is truly possible. We know that because we’ve been proving it for 60 years.
Anna Feuchtwang
Chief Executive, National Children’s Bureau