Fegans - a Christian children's charity in the South east

Craig Prentice tells the story of Fegans work at the '160' Family Resource Centre in Thanet, Kent.

Fegans is a Christian children’s charity, founded in 1870, with a vision for a society where every child is loved and valued. From its roots in orphanages and children’s homes, the charity’s work has successfully evolved. In response to changing needs, Fegans closed its residential homes and now focuses its work on supporting children and families in the community.

Today, Fegans has four geographical centres in the southeast including the Centre in Thanet.

Not only is Thanet the most deprived area in Kent, and the second most deprived in the government’s ‘South East’ region, but the housing estate on which the centre is situated is in within the top 6% most deprived wards in the country.  Not surprisingly, statutory and voluntary services are stretched almost to breaking point.

The Family Resource centre was purchased in 1999, picked because of a historical link between a Fegans children’s home/day care centre and the estate. Initially housing a pre-school, a community worker, and a schools counsellor, the centre was completely relaunched in 2005.

Honing the Vision

Given the overwhelming scale of the task and the variety of work thatcould be done, the main difficulty was to decide whatthe most urgent needs were and how best these could be met.

One worker concentrated on developing parenting support programmes, providing 1-2-1 support and parenting groups on the estate. Soon this developed into support for parents across the whole of Thanet. We developed links with local schools, health visitors and social services, who began to refer to us. Support for women suffering from domestic abuse soon became a clear need, and we developed our work in this area alongside other statutory and voluntary groups, running ‘Freedom’ programmes.

A second worker concentrated on developing our work in schools, expanding the counselling and emotional support service offered to children, and training to school staff. We complemented this by offering Christian assemblies and lunchtime clubs where invited.

The needs of the housing estate where the ‘160’ centre sits were great and our third worker developed a Connexions-funded youth work project, after-school children’s work and community events.

To begin with, though we are a Christian charity, we were not widelyknown amongst Christian congregations. We worked hard to send out themessage that we are part of the ‘church’ in Thanet – that we need theirsupport and they need us.

Fegans’ work now has defined aims, vision and areas of work:

‘Parents+’ - providing, ‘advice, information, support and inspiration to Thanet’s parents’.
We have been funded by the local authority on a number of occasions to provide 1-2-1 support for families in crisis, undertake preventative work with families at risk and run groups for parents. We work closely with schools and other statutory and charitable groups. Not least, we partner with churches who are community-focused, offering specialised support for children and families in their communities and running courses for parents with them.  We currently have four staff involved in this project.

‘Schools+’ - ‘supporting primary schools in Thanet in meeting the emotional, social and spiritual needs of children’.
We have a vision for the 30+ Primary schools in Thanet where…
• Every child is listened to, and supported through difficulty
• Every child has access to professional counselling regardless of cost
• Every child hears the gospel from someone who believes it to be true, and,
• Every school is connected to and supported by a local church

Currently we have a staff of three counsellors, two trained listeners, 10+ volunteers and a full-time office administrator. We are in regular contact with 18+ schools and this is expanding every month. The combination of showing children compassion through counselling and emotional support, with the words of the gospel communicated relevantly through assemblies and lunchtime clubs has proven successful. We have developed links with many churches who partner with us in this work – providing prayer, people and pounds!

‘Community+’ - seeking to ‘support children, teenagers and families in Whitehall, Ramsgate’.
We now have a range of activities, programmes and events for all ages of children and young people on the estate. These include:
• Buttons Pre-school and after-school club for the most vulnerable infant school-aged children
• 7-11s football based initiative
• Youth Work Project – activities four nights of the week and 1-2-1 support
• We also make our Parents+ work and Schools+ counselling service available to these families.
• We are working with local churches to run an Alpha-type, and invite children to church-based activities and working with the local council, housing associations, police and parish church on developing the run-down recreation ground. 

Maintaining the Christian ethos and other challenges

An initial challenge was gaining respect from statutory and other third sector agencies for the good work we were doing. There was a great deal of scepticism as to what it meant to be a ‘Christian organisation’ in the sector. I am pleased to say that this has significantly improved in recent years.

An ongoing challenge is the need to be 100% Christian but 100%professional in our ‘social work’. The reality of the gospel needs tounderpin the life and work of the organisation – bringing added valueto the compassionate work we do, and the motivation to sensitivelyshare the challenge and the hope of the good news for people’s lives.

Being part of a network of centres (four in total) with head office support has really helped.
Prayer and answered prayer continually motivate and encourage us, especially in times of difficulty. Christians and church leaders who catch the vision for the work encourage us along the way.

Top Tips

• Be area specific. It is better to do something of quality in a defined area than spread yourself thinly over a large area.

• Be transparent about the purpose of different elements of your programme. If they are ‘evangelical’ let people know, if they are not, let people know.
• Pray and ask others to pray for you. Nag them until they pray for you!

Craig Prentice, Team Leader
Fegans '160' Family Resource Centre

For more information on Fegans visit www.fegans.org.uk