Who is catching Children in Need's lifeline?

IT'S that time of year again when the Pudsey Bears are being dusted down and BBC viewers are pondering the prospect of a whole evening with Sir Terry Wogan.

Since its launch in 1980, Children in Need has become a fixture on our screens, each year persuading the public to part with massive amounts of money – a record-breaking £36 million across the UK last year.

But, as this year's charity jamboree is about to get under way, where exactly does all the money raised in the Lothians go?

More than £2.5 million has been given to projects in the region over the last three years, with 94 organisations benefiting. Competition for the money is fierce, with almost half those who apply being turned away.

The vast majority of the grants went to thoroughly deserving causes, but the scale of some awards could raise eyebrows among viewers prompted to hand over money by moving images of children in desperate circumstances.

The largest single award in the Lothians – £127,489 – was handed to anti-racism group SCORE Scotland to establish a series of specialist youth clubs in west Edinburgh for ethnic minority youngsters.

The backers of the three-year project say it aims to provide a space for those children – few of whom go to mainstream youth clubs – where they can make friends, have fun and tackle some of the issues that concern them, such as bullying, racism and isolation.

The project currently works in Broomhouse, Sighthill and Wester Hailes, but hopes to expand to cover a much larger area of west Edinburgh.

It also wants to build bridges with mainstream youth clubs.

In contrast, the smallest grant – of just £350 – helped the Stepping Stones charity buy children's car seats to help teenage mothers get about in north Edinburgh.

Some of the most disadvantaged children in the city were able to enjoy rare trips to the countryside thanks to grants to their schools.

Others living in dire circumstances were given basic furniture, such as proper beds, which they would not otherwise have had.

But most of the money handed out in the Lothians – 54 out of 122 grants – went largely towards paying care workers, project managers and administrative staff.

In offering to cover staff wages, the Children in Need Trust Board – the panel which decides where the money goes, and features senior BBC staff, alongside representatives from the public, private and voluntary sectors – goes against the grain.

Most grant-awarding organisations steer away from covering staff costs for fear projects will become reliant on them.

So what is the long-term legacy of Children in Need likely to be long after Friday's TV extravaganza fades from the screen?

Are the charities which it funds likely to end up pulling the plug on their work once their grant runs out?

This is the prospect currently facing the Bridges Project, which works with disruptive youngsters in East Lothian and Midlothian.

It was given £55,000 to create a new post for a development worker two years ago, to help the growing number of youths being referred to it by local schools and other agencies. But the money has just run out, leaving the Bridges eating into its reserves while it casts around for new funding to carry on the extra work.

Chief executive Jim Boyle said he hoped to be able to continue paying the valued member of staff until at least the spring.

"It's a very specialised post, doing very intensive work with 10-15 young people at any one time to look at their coping strategies and try and get them back into school or keep them with their families," he explained.

"We now need to go back and re-apply and see if we can get more funding. If we didn't get another Children in Need grant we would keep her on for a while and buy ourselves time to look at other possible funding routes, but a lot of them are becoming much tighter. It's a constant thorn in the side."

Children in Need has continued to fund some local projects year after year.

The Big Project, which organises youth clubs and one-to-one support for children in Broomhouse, has recently had its grant renewed for the fifth year in a row, for instance.

It is an unorthodox approach which, while open to criticism, has won Children in Need some staunch supporters in the charity sector.

Karen Docwra is a fundraiser for the HIV charity Waverley Care, which received a two-year grant of £59,418 to help finance a support worker to help children with HIV positive parents.

Although Waverley Care is unsure whether it will be able to continue to employ the care worker when its grant runs out at the end of next year, Ms Docwra is adamant that without such "visionary" funding many valuable services would never develop.

"I would say in term of funders, they're probably the best. They are very, very open to discussion during the application process and during the duration of the grant, so we're already talking to them about the option of re-applying," she said.

"The good thing is that Children in Need do have the vision to fund salaries. If people don't give you funding, you can't develop services." Children in Need said it looks to fund the projects it believes will be the most effective in changing the lives of disadvantaged youngsters.

A Children in Need spokeswoman said: "Funding staffing costs can be vital for charities. There are some projects that may work with people, for example, who are homeless or suffering from domestic abuse, which would have staff members who were already helping adults, but children can often feel exceptionally isolated in these experiences, and what's fantastic is when we're able to fund for a specialist to come in and provide support for the children.

"In other cases, for example, we could provide a co-ordinator for an organisation where the activities are run by volunteers, but without the co-ordinator there'd be nobody to arrange the volunteers."

APPEAL SAVED CITY BEREAVEMENT PROJECT
CHILDREN'S bereavement charity Richmond's Hope almost folded when its Children in Need grant ended – until the appeal agreed to step in with more help.

The charity, based in Niddrie Mains Road, makes use of play and therapy to help children understand traumatic losses such as suicides and murders in the family, as well as deaths from sickness and accident.

After receiving Children in Need funds for its first three years, it almost folded, until the charity agreed to step in for a fourth year in 2006.

That meant Richmond's Hope survived long enough for a £50,000 annual funding agreement with the city council to take effect.