The Reach Foundation

Who we are

Our ambition is for every child to live a life of choice and opportunity. 

The good news is that we know exactly what every baby, child and young person needs to thrive; the bad news is that we are not securing these conditions for millions of children in England right now. This is not a sporadic, isolated, endemic problem affecting a minority of children but a persistent, widespread, systemic issue necessitating system change. 

At The Reach Foundation, we seek to address this by pursuing system change through local action; empowering leaders to build powerful partnerships to ensure every child can enjoy a life of choice and opportunity.

Working in partnership with community leaders, existing institutions and local professionals, we have shown that it is possible to improve children’s outcomes across a range of domains—including personal safety, well-being, education and social relationships—while enhancing the capacity of children’s families and their communities to sustain better outcomes in the long-run.

Locally, we have developed an innovative, high-impact Cradle-to-Career model in Feltham—a historically under-resourced area of southwest London. 

Nationally, we are working with around 40 school trusts in England—from Teesside in the North East to Newquay in the South West—to establish ‘cradle to career’ models and  deliver programmes that cultivate the next generation of leaders for schools and trusts. We do this work through our Cradle to Career partnership and our school and trust leadership programmes.  

Our culture and values

At the Reach Foundation we connect people and institutions, cultivate leadership and catalyse action to address complex problems affecting babies, children and young people. 

Here are the Reach Foundation values that guide our work; 

• Rigour. We are clear slighted about the challenges babies, children and young people face. We use the best available evidence to inform our work, strive for excellence in all we do and support each other to attain this. 

• Relationships. We invest in building the strong relationships needed to tackle challenging, complex problems. 

• Intentionality. The most important decisions we make are about how we use our time and energy. We evaluate our work and think very carefully about what we start, stop and continue doing. 

• Action. We have a strong bias to action. We believe that also long as we learn and adapt and work with others, we can make positive change for babies, children and young people. 

• Justice. We are working to create a more socially just world. The way we work should always support that goal. 

Equality, diversity and inclusion policy

We believe that we can't tackle the complex challenges facing babies, children, and young people, without catalysing action that draws from diverse perspectives and is led by a wide range of voices. We are therefore committed to an inclusive world where every voice, experience, and background contributes to our shared goal of a more socially just future for all - within, around and beyond our organisation.

As we seek to build a team as diverse as the communities we serve, we actively encourage applications from anyone who feels their skills, experience and motivations could serve well in this role. We strongly encourage those with varied lived experiences, disciplines and identities to apply.