All about Bfriends
Bfriends – Friends of Birmingham Children’s Trust – is the connected charity of Birmingham Children’s Trust. Bfriends was established in November 2021 as an independent charity, developed and designed by children in care and care leavers in Birmingham alongside local partners and Trust staff.
Bfriends is registered on the Charity Commission website, registered charity number: 1196813.
Bfriends works alongside the Trust to gain a close understanding of the ongoing and changing needs of children in care and care-experienced young people.
These needs range from access to sport and wellbeing programmes, to employment opportunities and help with important life-changing events such as moving into independent living.
Essentially Bfriends helps support the lives of children to give them access to the same opportunities and experiences that their peers, who have not grown up in the care system, have easily accessed or experienced.
Giving voice to the children in care in Birmingham is at the heart of the charity and Bfriends co-chair, Abba Loughran, grew up in care in Birmingham. Abba is an ambassador for children in care, care leavers and children known to the Trust.
Bfriends operates in partnership with city partners, businesses, other charities, and the community. We all work together as one team with a joint vision that friendship is at the heart of all we do.
We aspire to have friendships with each other and very importantly for our children and young adults to have at least one meaningful friendship in their life. Creating and sustaining friendships for those in care and care leavers is our guiding priority. The golden thread that binds us together.
Who is Birmingham Children’s Trust?
Birmingham Children’s Trust exists to make a positive difference for children, young people and families in the city.
They used to be called Children’s Services and be run by Birmingham City Council. For a long time, Birmingham needed to do much more to support disadvantaged children and young people in the city and make sure they were safe.
They have made many important improvements – listening to and learning from others, improving social work practice and supporting staff to do their jobs well. They became a children’s trust in April 2018 to help accelerate changes.
They were last inspected by Ofsted in April 2023, when they were rated as delivering a ‘Good’ service. (see news release here).
The Trust is owned by, but independent from, Birmingham City Council.
What is corporate parenting?
Birmingham is the largest local authority in the UK and is one of the youngest and most diverse cities in Europe. We are proud of our city and care about the people that live here. Critically, this includes our children in care and care experienced young people who are OUR collective responsibility.
We call it Corporate Parenting and it is something in our city that we are proud of and want to promote. Corporate Parenting means being the ‘best parent’ we can be to our children in care and those with care experience. This means making sure they are safe, loved, happy, healthy, and doing well.
In Birmingham we have high aspirations for our children and young people and it’s a team effort across the city to support their achievements and success.