Young families › what the records show · drawn as a map of connections

Families with young children: what the records show from outside

A body sees its own members and the people who reach them. Public records see every charity in England at once. This page sets the two side by side for families with young children: who else does this work, where the network is thin, how exposed the field is, and how the people it serves are written about.

1. Who else does this work

2,329 charities in England are in this field by name or by membership. 5,736 other charities, outside it, say in their own latest annual report that they serve the same people: 71.4% of all the charities that name them. By what the register records them as doing:

Register purpose	Charities outside the field naming the people
Religious activities	3,275
Education/training	2,186
General charitable purposes	1,496
Poverty relief	1,203
Health	850
Economic/community development, employment	814
Disability	747
Recreation	653
Arts, culture, heritage, science	645
Amateur sport	579
Other purposes	440
Overseas aid	422

A charity records up to three purposes, so the rows overlap.

Among them, charities that are themselves in another of the fields on this site: 89 young people; 43 mental health; 30 food aid; 27 disability services; 24 local infrastructure; 19 learning disability; 16 hospice care; 16 veterans.

Of those outside the field, 23.0% show under three months’ reserves or three years of deficits, against 7.5% of the field itself.

2. Where the network is thin

68 of the 152 county and unitary areas of England record no presence of Home-Start UK’s network: no listed place, and no member charity recording the area. The median share of residents on low incomes in those areas is 26.6%, against 24.6% across England.

Area	Share of residents on low incomes	Thin in how many of 24 fields on this site
Tower Hamlets	41.8%	9
Hackney	40.3%	9
Newham	39.7%	12
Barking and Dagenham	38.6%	16
Sandwell	37.7%	9
Blackburn with Darwen	37.4%	12
Wolverhampton	36.3%	13
Hartlepool	36.3%	16
Walsall	35.9%	13
Haringey	35.2%	13
Liverpool	35.0%	7
Knowsley	34.8%	9
Nottingham	33.8%	9
Stoke-on-Trent	33.3%	12
South Tyneside	31.8%	7

The 15 with the most residents on low incomes are shown, of 68.

Across every field on this site, the areas thin in most of them: Isles of Scilly (17 of 21), Barking and Dagenham (16 of 24), Portsmouth (16 of 24), Hartlepool (16 of 25), Rutland (16 of 25), Thurrock (16 of 25), City of London (15 of 24), Havering (15 of 24), Hillingdon (15 of 24), Lambeth (14 of 24).

What this can and cannot say. A thin area is one where the body’s own listed places and its charities’ recorded areas of operation are few for the people counted there. It does not mean nobody there gets help: section 1 is the measure of who else is at work.

3. Money and exposure

Fragile means under three months’ reserves on the latest return, or spending above income for three years running. Government-dependent means half or more of income from government grants and contracts.

Group	Charities	Fragile	Reserves (months, median)	Income change over returns (median)	Donations share (median)
The field	2,257	7.4%	3	42.5%	0.0%
All other charities in England	65,851	21.3%	4.4	39.4%	28.8%
The field, government-dependent	1,247	7.9%	2	42.3%	0.1%
The field, not dependent	1,010	6.8%	3.9	43.5%	0.0%
The field, in the most deprived third of neighbourhoods	308	14.9%	3	35.0%	0.0%
The field, in the least deprived third	848	5.1%	1.6	42.6%	0.0%

55.5% of the field is government-dependent.

4. How the people are written about

Of the 6,259 charities whose latest report names children under five, 5.0% write of them beside words of lack (vulnerable, struggling, crisis, hardship, isolated) and 11.6% beside words of what they bring (skills, work, leadership, confidence, potential, independence). Across every population on this site the sector’s figures are 23.4% and 25.5%. This field’s people are written about mostly by what they bring.

5. Home-Start UK’s members against the rest of the field

93 charities in the field are on Home-Start UK’s own list or record its membership; 2,236 are not.

Measure	Members	Rest of the field
Fragile (share)	20.4%	6.9%
Government-dependent (share)	17.2%	57.1%
Reserves, months (median)	2.8	3.0
Income change over returns, % (median)	13.5	43.5
Donations share, % (median)	3.8	0
Income, £ (median)	231,792	145,674
No income source over 60% (share)	6.2%	2.6%
Report names the people (share)	75.3%	20.5%
Writes of what they bring (share)	22.9%	13.7%

A figure is shown only for a group of five or more; a median is of the charities with the figure on their return.

What this can and cannot say. These are counts over groups of charities and places in England, from their own returns and reports and from national statistics. They show where a field stands beside the rest of the sector; they do not rank any charity, name any, or say why.