Royal Wanstead Children's Foundation
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The Royal Wanstead Children's Foundation is a British charity which aims to help vulnerable children of single parents or other carers. It is the successor charity to an organisation founded as an orphanage by Dr Andrew Reed in 1827. From 1842, it was successively known as the Infant Orphan Asylum, the Royal Infant Orphanage, and the Royal Wanstead School. The school was based at Wanstead on the edge of Epping Forest in grand buildings that today house the Snaresbrook Crown Court.
The Royal Wanstead Children's Foundation no longer operates its own boarding schools but helps to support vulnerable children at a range of boarding schools throughout the UK.
Royal Wanstead has helped support more than 1,600 vulnerable children at some 150 different boarding schools since the closure of its own school in 1971. It describes this work as Assisted Boarding.
Today, the Royal Wanstead Children's Foundation is helping to support some 250 children at 100 boarding schools. These children have either one or no parent and benefit from the high levels of pastoral care and individual attention available at many boarding schools.
The chairman of this significant children's charity is Colin Morrison, a magazine publisher and journalist who was formerly beneficiary of Royal Wanstead. The Patron is HRH The Princess Royal. During a speech at Royal Wanstead's annual conference held at Lambeth Palace, The Princess Royal said: "Boarding school will , by no means, suit every child vulnerable or not. But our case studies show that, for the right child in the right school at the right time, Assisted Boarding really can help transform a young person's life and prospects. I commend Royal Wanstead as a highly-effective charity deserving of support."
Mr Morrison has been active in campaigning for the Government to recognise and incentivise the 'vital welfare role' of boarding schools at a time when (he says) the number of boarding places has declined by up to 40% in less than 20 years. He has also called for local authorities to use 'foster boarding' to help solve the acute shortage of carers. He has advocated that local authorities could more readily recruit as foster parents some working couples where the children were in boarding schools. Mr Morrison has said: "It's not for all children, and not for all foster carers, but it's an idea to consider when local authorities are trying to secure the future of a child in care. Boarding schools can and should be part of the solution for many more vulnerable children than they are currently. Modern boarding schools have so much to offer vulnerable children."
The Foundation is seeking increases in donations, legacies and subscriptions to help it expand Assisted Boarding. It is also seeking to persuade more grant-making charities and other organisations to help support these vulnerable children.
In 2007, Royal Wanstead is celebrating its 180th anniversary with an appeal to raise £180,000 which, it says, would help it support another 10 vulnerable children in boarding schools for the duration of their secondary education.
