As we start the new year, it is important we reflect on our last 12 months at The Childhood Trust. I feel immensely proud of what we have achieved together and grateful for your continued dedication to London's children experiencing poverty.
2025 was a year of progress and strategic action at The Childhood Trust. We drove forward our mission, distributing an impressive £2.368m in grants to frontline London charities, leveraging a total £10.5m in matched funding through the two annual Big Give campaigns. You can also find highlights of the impact from our charity partners' 2024/25 service delivery online here.
We have strengthened our future vision, establishing roadmaps through our new Grants, Volunteer and Research Strategies for 2025-2027. Our role as convener for the child poverty space continued as we delivered our 7th London Child Poverty Summit in October, which brought together charities, young people, supporters and some incredible speakers to tackle the opportunities and challenges of AI in the sector.
Towards the end of the year, we saw major developments in the national policy landscape. We welcome the UK Government's abolition of the two-child benefit limit, a significant step projected to lift hundreds of thousands of children out of poverty. However, we have been clear in public statements that the benefit remains deeply uneven, particularly in London. Read our statement here.
Our commitment to closing the 'dignity gap' that remains for families and children is central to our work. We are currently finalising research into material deprivation and furniture poverty in London, which we will release in the next few months.
We start 2026 with tremendous momentum and I look forward to sharing more detail on our future plans soon.
Thank you for making 2025 a transformative year for The Childhood Trust, the hundreds of frontline charities in our network and, of course, most importantly, children living in poverty across London.
With best wishes,
Josephine
Josephine McCartney,
Chief Executive, The Childhood Trust
