Benita
Chief Executive, The Place2Be, Business in the Community, Responsible Business
The Place2Be is a unique organisation offering effective early intervention to tackle children’s behavioural problems and anti-social behaviour. Through working with Business in the Community we met our current Chairman, Michael Fowle CSE, then Chairman of KPMG London and South England on a Prince’s Seeing is Believing visit. This in turn led us to work with KPMG to develop a model for our work which is now established 14 different Local Authorities across England and Scotland, working in 126 schools and offering support to 40,000 children and their families and teachers.
A further visit in 1996, led to Halifax Bank of Scotland (HBOS) supporting our work in Edinburgh. Having HBOS on board meant that we were able to create a corporate consortium of Children’s Champions, which has sustained our work in Scotland. We also received a major grant from the HBOS foundation this year towards the continued roll out of our services across the UK.
Recent involvement with Business in the Community has made The Place2Be service in Burnley possible, which we had been trying to establish for three years in collaboration with five other schools. As a result of the 2007 Seeing is Believing visit this service is soon to be reaching 2,677 local children.
There is no doubt that Business in the Community has made a huge difference to The Place2Be and more importantly to the lives of thousands of children, by enabling the service to grow and develop. We are very grateful to Business in the Community for demonstrating that partnerships between the private, public and voluntary sector really can make a difference to the lives of thousands of children.
