What About The Children? (WATCh?)
Raising awareness about the never-changing emotional needs of the under-threes in our ever-changing society
The charity was established in 1993 by Doreen Goodman and Susannah Clasen to promote better public understanding about the importance of the emotional needs of children in their first three years.
After the death of James Bulger in that year, Doreen Goodman wrote to the Guardian Newspaper, seeking support for her view that James’s young killers were victims too. She explained that children who have had their emotional needs met early in life are unlikely to become murderers. The response from readers was overwhelmingly supportive of her views and in response, in March 1993, What About The Children? was established.
Since then What About The Children?, which is entirely run by volunteers and financed through donations, has worked to inform parents, professionals and policy-makers about the findings of authoritative research on the importance of children’s emotional needs and brain development during the first three years. The charity has no religious or political affiliations and its views are supported by leading childcare specialists, doctors, health professionals and politicians in the UK and abroad.
What we do
The charity promotes prevention of harm rather than subsequent intervention as the key to a long term strategy for the emotional wellbeing of children, and their future physical and mental health. Prevention benefits the individual child, but ultimately also brings huge benefits to the whole of society. What About The Children? in collaboration with many other children’s charities, organisations and individuals is calling on government, professionals and employers to institute policies and practices that better support parents/carers with children under three, offering them information and services that will enable them to provide their children with the appropriate, responsive loving care which research tells us is vital for optimum brain development and future physical and mental health.
Click the button below to download details of our latest campaign. Please support our campaign by circulating this widely.
The following film from the Parent Infant Foundation shows the importance of responsive, loving care and highlights the potential impact on young children when they do not receive it.
Our work
What About The Children? contributes to government consultations; the charity is represented on All Party Parliamentary Groups (APPG's) and involved with other national groups and coalitions concerned with children, for example, the Early Childhood Forum (ECF) and the First 1001 Days Movement. We support and have links with a number of other like-minded groups internationally and nationally, for example Brainwave Trust in New Zealand and Babywerk in the Netherlands. We host regular conferences and memorial Goodman Lectures We publish a monthly Blog and quarterly E News and post regularly on social media such as Twitter (@WATCthechildren).
Our Science and Research Group seeks out peer-reviewed research relevant to our work and commissions one of our team of science academics to produce a short summary of Key Findings. These summaries are available on our Website. As with all aspects of the work of What About The Children?, the focus of the Science and Research Group is the Emotional Wellbeing of children under three years.