About National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children
The NSPCC's mission is to end cruelty to children.
The NSPCC FULL STOP Campaign will spearhead a host of new initiatives based on partnership with other organisations and mass involvement from the public.
Child abuse is still the cruel reality for many children today, yet we know that most child cruelty can be prevented - provided the will exists to do so. We owe it to the children to make it happen.
The FULL STOP Campaign aims to:
- Change attitudes - making the care and protection of children everybody's responsibility
- Harness energy - involving all people and organisations concerned about children
- Create new initiatives - launching new services, new approaches and using new technologies to end cruelty to children
The Campaign will work through five broad programmes which will help and support children and families.
To start this process the NSPCC needs £250 million, to be raised through one of the largest charitable appeals ever attempted in this country.
Plans include:
- Services to protect five times as many children compared to current levels
- Making NSPCC services more accessible to children including via the Internet
- Radical new initiatives such as school counselling teams. By 2002 the NSPCC will have schools-based services in nine education authorities
- Local communities energised through Child Friendly Action Zones to ensure the whole community works to protect children
- A series of campaigns against cruelty to children
- The 24-hour freephone NSPCC Child Protection Helpline to respond to more calls and to make services available in Welsh and all major Asian languages
- A major research study on child abuse in the UK
- Doubling the capacity to fight abuse of children through initiatives such as the NSPCC Specialist Investigation Services
- Partnerships with schools to get the issue of protecting children onto the curriculum and to prepare children for parenthood
- Influencing law and social policy reform in order to end cruelty to children
Our history
The NSPCC was founded in 1889 by the Reverend Benjamin Waugh. As a young man, Waugh worked as a Congregational Minister in the slums of east London. Every day he witnessed the cruelty and deprivation experienced by large numbers of children.
This was a time when abuse of children, unlike cruelty to animals, was not a criminal offence.
Waugh worked tirelessly to help such children and campaigned vigorously to draw public and government attention to their suffering.
News of Waugh's pioneering work spread rapidly. When the London Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children was established in 1884, Waugh was appointed joint Honorary Secretary. Five years later, in 1889, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children was founded with Waugh as Director and Queen Victoria as Royal Patron.
In 1889 the NSPCC employed 29 inspectors, who in that year alone dealt with 3,937 cases of child abuse and neglect. So great was the need for their services that by 1900 the number of inspectors had increased to 163. By 1905 the NSPCC had helped over one million children.
The first Prevention of Cruelty to Children Act (1889) was largely the result of five years' lobbying by Waugh and his supporters. A century later, the NSPCC continues to uphold and develop the campaigning tradition established by its founder.
The charity was influential in ensuring that the Children Act of 1989 reflected the needs of children. Five years later, in 1994, the NSPCC secured a significant amendment to the Criminal Justice and Public Orders Bill, as part of its ongoing campaign for a child-friendly criminal justice system.