Children’s charities announce merger

Children’s charities Home for Good and Safe Families are to merge, with the legal aspects of the move set to be completed this Autumn.

The charities have come together as they have both been set up by Christians and have the same aim to support children in care or at risk of being take into care.

While Safe Families focuses on supported struggling families to ensure parents can stay with their children, Home for Good focuses on providing placements for children if they must enter the care system.

“We believe that by joining together, as one organisation, we will see more churches equipped, more volunteers empowered and trained, more local authorities served, more families supported, less children entering care and for those that do, well-matched homes found,” they said in a statement.

According to the charities register Safe Families spending of £4.8m for the year ending March 2023 was £66,980 greater than its income over the same period.

The difference was even more pronounced over the same period for Home for Good, which spent £740,809 over its £1.1m income.

In announcing the merger the charities say the move has not been “motivated by financial saving but by creating a stronger organisation”.

Safe Families chief executive Kat Osborn said: “Home for Good and Safe Families will look different on the other side, but I believe that through reshaping what we both look like, we can create something better than the sum of the parts.”

Home for Good chief executive Tarn Bright says the charities brands will be retained under the new charity to evidence the unique roles we carry”.

“Change is tough, and we acknowledge it, but the alternative is not changing; and the consequence of that is missing the opportunity to do something which we believe could supercharge the impact we currently have,” she added.

The merged charities will be co-led by Osborn and Bright. The board will be co-chaired by Safe Families chair Keight Danby and Home for Good chair Simon Blake for a year and all trustees of both charities will combine into a single board.