The remarkable ways a Yorkshire children's charity is fighting hidden poverty and rural destitution

Nestled against the Yorkshire Dales, Skipton, a market town in North Yorkshire’s Craven district, is a site of beautiful architecture and natural scenery. In 2014, The Sunday Times named it the best place to live in the UK, and this year, it came second in a Rightmove survey of Britain’s happiest towns.

But behind these accolades is a shadow of deep poverty that leaves generations of young people with difficult childhoods and limited prospects for the rest of their lives. It was in response to this crisis that Emma Pears, who then worked in schools with North Yorkshire County Council, founded SELFA Children’s Charity in 2007.

Following the election of the coalition government in 2010, cuts led to Pears being made redundant from her council position, and she decided to dedicate herself to SELFA full-time. Since its foundation, the charity has grown from a voluntary operation with a £500 budget to an organisation that supports 150 children and young people per week.

SELFA is now based in a building that was a school until 2017, when it closed due to a shortage of pupils. There, Pears and her team provide wellbeing support, one-to-one and group classes, meals and food boxes from a community fridge that is funded partly from grants and partly from a partnership with FareShare. Children also have access to a playground and an allotment.

Pears loves Skipton and is proud of the recognition it has received. “But that doesn’t always tell the real story about those hidden pockets of deprivation – particularly the rural poverty that we see here,” she says. “It is a great place to live and a lovely place to grow up, but it’s not so great if you don’t have access to services.”

That need has grown exponentially. “Our work has ramped up every year,” Pears says. “Since Covid, our reach has increased by a third, and our income’s increased by that as well.”

Before Covid, she says, “a lot of [local families] were just about coping, getting by, and then Covid and the cost of living hit and we’ve seen a lot of families really struggling. We have people who work in supermarkets and factory workers coming to access our community fridge, because they just can’t make ends meet.

“We also provide mental health support now, which we never did before. In our community, the need for mental health support has grown so much.”

This is delivered through a subcontract from the NHS to provide sessions with children in schools, at the centre and in the community, as well as offering group sessions in schools and drop-ins.

Pears also works hard to break down the stigma attached to the need for support in feeding a family. “Some people say to me, ‘Putting food on the table’s the first thing I’d do,’ and I say, ‘Yeah, but there’s somewhere you can go to for food!’” she says.

“It’s about thinking strategically when you’re running a household – what could I get help with and what can I not get help with? You know, you’ve got to keep a roof over your head.”

Beneficiaries of the community fridge primarily come from referrals from GPs, health workers and social prescribers, but families can also self-refer, and there is no means-testing in place.

SELFA also provides transportation for food boxes, and also for children, who may have no other means of getting to and from the centre due to a lack of public transport infrastructure.

Others rarely leave their homes at all. “My main worry at the moment is those children who are at home all day in their bedrooms alone,” says Pears, referring to a recent report found that almost one in three children are avoiding school because of anxiety. “It’s incredibly detrimental for children’s wellbeing, and we’re seeing it more and more.”

She and her colleagues also support children with complex needs whose parents used to work part-time to support them, but now, “because of the cost-of-living crisis, [are] having to work full-time.”

SELFA works with children with all levels of need and disability, from one-to-one support and mentoring to small group activities, larger classes and residential holidays. Often, children and young people move on to more sociable activities as they grow in confidence.

“Our ultimate aim is that young people will grow in self-esteem and independence and aspiration and want more for themselves,” Pears says. “Children have a sense of belonging here, and they feel part of something here, and that’s the crux of it all, really. They can take that sense of belonging to other places as well.”

Their success in achieving that goal is reflected in the aspirations of the young people they support. “We have a volunteer programme for 19- to 25-year-olds, so we do have a lot of young people who come back to us to volunteer,” she says.

They are now seeking funding to create more paid roles for former service users. “We’re getting to the point where we say to young people, ‘What do you want to do?’ and they say, ‘I want to work at SELFA’, so we want to see how we can make that possible.”

Elsewhere, young people move into jobs in the local community, proving that SELFA’s work has social and economic benefits as well as helping its beneficiaries on a personal level.

Pears is also proud of the diversity within the SELFA workforce. “There’s a lot of experience in this team – people who were young carers or grew up in foster care, people who are neurodiverse and members of the LGBTQ+ community, and many people who’ve come from a place of, ‘I didn’t have the best childhood, so I get it, I understand’,” she says.

“We had our first Pride in Skipton in 2022 and our young people really drove that for the whole town and were involved with the town council, and because the team member who led on that is part of the LGBTQ+ community, the young people felt that they were seen, too, so that was really, really important.”

SELFA has also always modelled itself on the principles that now form the basis of trauma-informed approaches – “years ago, we used to call it the SELFA way,” Pears laughs – and all staff attend mandatory training on restorative practice.

That means that “every achievement is acknowledged and lauded,” Pears explains. “We have an annual SELFA celebration, and one parent said, ‘My child has never, ever won anything before.’” That child, who was adopted and had struggled in a school that did not cater well to neurodiversity, had been chosen as the SELFA Superstar of the year by their peers.

“Children and young people want care, they want it close to home, and they want it from people they know and trust. My motto is, ‘What more can we do?’”

SELFA’s financial independence comes with barriers, such as a reduction in funding for the north despite the government’s Levelling Up scheme. But “we can meet the need when we see it, rather than having to meet some other agenda,” Pears says. “The voice of children and young people is always at the centre of what we do.”

They also have flexibility, allowing them to give children and young people options – because, as she tells them, “you are valued and we want you here.”

Their in-house training has allowed them to support mild to moderate psychological needs, like anxiety, they have also received training from Mind on mental health first aid and one-to-one mentoring, and there is at least one trained crisis worker in every group.

This allows them to go some way towards plugging the socioeconomic gap at play in home-based wellbeing support – parents who work long hours and are under intense stress, Pears notes, are less equipped to support their children than those who have more comfortable incomes and the flexibility to work from home.

When the Big Issue visits, the Youth Action Group – one of SELFA’s offerings for secondary-aged children – are getting ready for dinner. “We do things that help other people,” explains one participant, who started attending SELFA when she was four and is now 12. “So, for example, in the past, we’ve given refugees blankets for the winter, and we did a bake sale.”

Elsewhere, a group of primary-aged children are using mood cards to discuss their emotions. “What does empathy mean?” asks a young girl, to which the group leader replies, “That’s a really good question!”

Since the election of the coalition, deprivation and poverty has increased across the UK, and “children and young people have been the worst-hit in the last 14 years,” Pears says. But she remains optimistic.

“I don’t want to read another report or another article about how terrible things are in this country. We need people to do the doing! We need people out there, and I think that if we’re not working directly with children and young people then we’re not doing our job.

“Children and young people want care, they want it close to home, and they want it from people they know and trust. My motto is, ‘What more can we do?’”

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