Vice Chair, Ria Bernard sets out our charity of the year. Please contact Ria at [email protected] to get involved.
This year the Young Fabians will be supporting a cause too-often overlooked, but which very much impacts the educational opportunities and life chances of our children and young people.
A community school in Lambeth, positioned within the two poorest wards of the borough, has an intake predominantly made up of children from disadvantaged families. The school’s intake includes a significant number of children from families who are unable to be housed by the council and from refugee families. This means that the school is educating classrooms of children who face the additional challenges of huge economic pressures, learning English as an Additional Language (EAL), inadequate and overcrowded housing and households dependent on council funding to meet their needs.
The school has bought in a local counselling service which works closely with children with a range of emotional, behavioural and psychological issues as a consequence of abuse, neglect and unimaginable family circumstances, including domestic violence and bereavement. In addition, the Speech & Language Therapy service has a caseload that comprises children from significantly deprived backgrounds.
Many families currently have no recourse to public funds at present. This means that the expensive transition from primary to secondary school will be a significant strain on families as they try to meet the additional costs of new uniforms, books, resources and travel. Therefore, the Young Fabians have decided to help support the work of this incredible charity by setting up the Young Fabians’ Aspiration Fund. As Young Fabians we are passionate about discussing the policy ideas that we hope will alleviate the inequality within society. We are hoping that, with your help as members, we can contribute to a community for the benefit of the next generation – and therefore help to even-out the playing field when it comes to educational attainment and lifetime opportunity.
The aim of the Aspiration Fund is to provide financial support to families with no recourse to public funds for Year 6 pupils as they transition to secondary school. We will be raising money for this worthy cause at many of our events so please do bring along any lose change and get in touch with me if you would like to help out.
Thank you.
Ria Bernard
Vice-Chair, Young Fabians