Chance UK wins Centre for Social Justice award

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3rd July 2009

Gracia McGrath, chief executive of Chance UK, reacts to the charity's Centre for Social Justice award for its work in fighting poverty.

Question: Congratulations on winning the award. What do you think made you stand out among all the other poverty-fighting charities this year?

Gracia McGrath: I think the fact that our mentoring programme is an early intervention one helped us to stand out. I think now that everyone sees how important it is to work with children very early when their difficult behaviour starts to show.

Our children are as young as five, which means we can get positive messages about themselves across before any negative patterns of behaviour are too established.

Also, the research into the effectiveness of Chance UK's mentoring programme is very detailed, and proves that what we do really makes a difference to the lives of the children. The facts that 98 per cent of our children make improvements in their behaviour and 51 per cent are not classed as having a behavioural difficulty at all by the end of the year are hard to argue with.

Question: Do you think winning this award will help to raise the profile of Chance UK?

Gracia McGrath: We hope so! Winning an award is always great recognition of the work that our staff, mentors and children have done, and it's wonderful to have that external recognition.

We also think that receiving this award from an organisation like the Centre for Social Justice will help raise our profile in political circles. It's important that all political parties back mentoring and early intervention as effective ways of fighting poverty and criminal behaviour, so hopefully this award will help achieve that.

Winning an award of this calibre is also helpful for raising both our profile and credibility to the commissioners of the boroughs and regions that we are in discussions with about opening new Chance UK programmes.

Question: Do you have any specific projects in mind that will immediately benefit from the £10,000 prize money?

Gracia McGrath: We are talking to JP Morgan at the moment, who are the sponsors of this award about that. I know they are very excited about our recently opened programme in Lambeth and we are in agreement that the funding should be spent in our newest area of operation. It costs £4,000 a year to mentor a child who is at risk of developing criminal and antisocial behaviour later in life; this investment in their future not only helps them have a better future but also saves the taxpayers money.

Question: What does this award mean for the future of Chance UK?

Gracia McGrath: Chance UK is committed to spreading the message that well-structured mentoring makes a real difference to the life of a child and that intervening early is the most effective way of ensuring the children can achieve their potential.

This award will serve as an endorsement of our work in fighting poverty by raising our profile within the sector. This in turn will attract funders to our work and allow us to weather the storm of the recession, and even come out the other end with an expanded service, one that provides mentoring to children in even more London boroughs and across the UK.

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