Before Becoming a Parent (B4BP) charity 1180821
Before Becoming a Parent (B4BP) Charity 1180821
Annual Report, 1[st] April 2023 to 31[st] March 2024
Our mission
Our charity has continued its mission to prepare children and young people at school and in other settings to become good parents in future, and also to support parents of young children who are struggling to be ’good enough’ parents in the present.
Our experience
We have built upon our experience over several years of delivering lessons in primary and secondary schools which aimed to increase students’ knowledge and empathy concerning the emotional aspects of parenthood. We ran Baby Watching in primary schools, and sessions in secondary schools where we brought in a variety of parents and babies to be observed and spoken to, plus teenage parents to explain their situation, and we used drama techniques to make the material come alive even further. We lent ‘virtual babies’ to students to take home for the weekend.
Our dissemination
Having seen the popularity and benefits of this work, we decided to take it much further by producing a comprehensive guide for school staff in any part of the world, and therefore spent some years researching and writing our two-volume book Nothing More Important . Volume One was completed and published by April 2024, with a view to completing Volume Two in the following year.
Help to parents of children
We used our grant, received in December 2022 from Awards for All, to fund ‘Friday Fun for All’ after school sessions in the building of the Toy Library in Leytonstone, East London. This was to assist families who were stressed, partly because of the demands of homework. It was designed as a venue where children and teenagers could complete their homework, with support, in time for the weekend. As we predicted, it became an invaluable opportunity for parents to gain support with various issues related to their role as parents. The sessions were staffed by workers with experience of delivering play therapy and other types of help to parents and children.
The future
There were discussions about setting up an All Party Parliamentary Group about school-based preparation for parenthood, once the book has been distributed in future years.
B4BP Annual Accounts 1[st] April 2023 – 31st March 2024
Bank balance at 31 3 23 £11,388 86 (comprising Awards for All grant £9,500)
Income
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0
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Expenditure £
Publicity 517 00
Room Hire 2,205 00
DBS checks 101 60
Staff fees 1,180 00
Training 24 00
Food 416 48
Total expenditure: £4,444 08
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Bank balance at 31 3 24 £6,944 78
Signed: Carol Spence, Chair
January 13[th] 2025