Video Transcript
NAME OF FILM: LOOKING TO THE FUTURE
ANDREW FLANAGAN, CHIEF EXECUTIVE
It’s now eight months since I joined the NSPCC and I’ve spent a huge amount of time getting to know the people both our staff and our supporters, who make the NSPCC such a success.
I’ve been very impressed by the enthusiasm, the commitment, the knowledge and the drive of people, both staff and volunteers who really want to make a difference for children.
I’ve learnt a huge amount about what we do, what we do well, what successes we’ve had but also how much there still is to do in the world of child protection in the UK.
Our supporters contribute a huge amount to what we do here at the NSPCC both in terms of their fundraising, making sure that there is money available to provide the services that we have to help children but also becoming directly involved as service volunteers through such services as ChildLine where they give freely of their time.
And that is one of the things that is most impressive, people give their time, year after year, even at huge personal inconvenience to themselves just to make sure that we can make a difference for children.
I think that one of the things that we have achieved this year which helps a huge number of children, has been the progress that we have made in upgrading our helplines.
This is a service that we can provide to every child in the UK and they can contact us for help and advice.
The progress that we have been making is to open out to what has been simply a telephone call, to online services and in the future to texting. This has been a huge undertaking for us, and I’m happy to report that we’re on time and on budget in terms of achieving what we need to do.
Looking to the future, it’s clear that the scale and the complexity of child abuse and child cruelty in the UK is significantly larger than one organisation can fix on it’s own.
What is clear from that is that we have to be very focussed, very targeted, on ways in which we can make a difference, to make sure we are not trying to do too much across too broad a front.
In addition, we need to be clear that the organisation, the NSPCC, has to work with all of the other organisations in the field of child protection in the UK.
It’s only by combining our efforts with their efforts, that we have a real chance of ending cruelty to children here in the UK.