Barnardo's

Barnardo's

Sector: Children in Care

Barnardo’s is one of the UK’s most respected and influential children’s charities. Our vision is that the lives of all children and young people should be free from poverty, abuse and discrimination. Our purpose is to help the most vulnerable children and young people transform their lives and fulfil their potential.

Dr Thomas Barnardo founded the charity in 1867, and devoted his life to the principle that everyone deserves the best possible start in life, whatever their background - a philosophy that still inspires the charity today.

We have more than 400 diverse services reaching over 100,000 children, young people and their families, each of which is locally based and addresses local needs. What links all our services together is that each of them addresses child and family disadvantage, each of them is striving to demonstrate greater effectiveness and each is seeking to provide the very best value for money, both to commissioners and to our supporters.

Barnardo’s has extensive experience of developing and managing Children’s Services with partners including local authorities, education and health services. Our experiences of other specialist services provide information and skills that we share within the organisation, for example, communicating with children who have no verbal communication, communicating with very young children, the needs of young people who are seeking asylum and the needs of young people who have been sexually exploited.

Barnardo’s encourage participation with their service users. We will listen to, consult with and involve them in decisions and policy making, enabling them to speak for themselves on issues which affect their lives. Barnardo’s believe in the abused, the vulnerable, the forgotten and the neglected. We pledge to support them, stand up for them and bring out the best in each and every child and young person.

Description of interests

We are interested in potentially accessing social impact bonds and other investments in services.

Service provider information

Target population: Children in care

Services provided: Direct service delivery, project management, training and consultancy

Outcomes achieved:

Barnardo’s has a sophisticated IT based outcomes setting, monitoring, measuring and evaluation framework to ensure our services achieve and improve outcomes and impact.