General Questions

Spurgeons is a Christian children’s charity founded in 1867. Today we run around 50 services/projects in 22 Local Authority areas across England (Midlands, East, West, South and London). With more than 400 staff, 150 volunteers and thousands of supporters, Spurgeons deliver a range of support services, including:

• Health and wellbeing for Early Years
• Children’s centres
• Domestic violence/abuse
• Young carers
• Prisoner family services
• Specialist support for girls in gangs

Spurgeons was founded in 1867 by one of the most well-known public figures of the day – a Baptist preacher called Charles Haddon Spurgeon. He founded an orphanage in Stockwell, south London. The Spurgeons Home moved first to Surrey and then to Kent after the war, but closed in the late 1970’s.

Since then, Spurgeons has supported vulnerable children and families through many different types of work across the UK. Today, the charity has contact with over 30,000 children and adults, whilst working more intensively with over 3,000 children and young people over the last year.

Over the last financial year during Covid-19 and lockdown, 783 children were identified in safeguarding incidents Spurgeons responded to. 86% of children whose outcomes were measured with an evidence-based measuring tool showed positive progress.

Spurgeons services include children centres and family hubs, prison-based family support, services to support young carers, families affected by domestic abuse and to girls and young woman in, or at risk of, joining gangs. They also offer parenting courses and support.

Spurgeons kept all their services open during the pandemic, adapting to ensure they maintained contact with vulnerable children and families.

Fegans has an incredibly similar heritage to Spurgeons; Fegans is named after James Fegan who started children’s orphanages in 1870, a couple of years after Charles Spurgeon and just down the road from him – they may have been acquaintances. Today Fegans provide qualified counselling to vulnerable children, parenting to struggling families and own two preschools that both operate as family hubs in Kent, Sussex, South London and Oxford.

Fegans employ approximately 100 employees and have around 30 volunteers.

Spurgeons has been planning its long-term future for some time. Our ambition is to support children who are vulnerable, because of their families’ circumstances, to have a home life where they find the love, peace and safety that enables them to flourish.

We have been looking at several areas where we feel it is important that Spurgeons respond to children and young people’s needs by developing services that can reach and support them. To that end Fegans services– including school counselling and support, parent support and pre-schools — offers immense potential to be able to build on the work of both charities.

Spurgeons and Fegans share a common faith and set of values, complementary disciplines and geographies and similar heritages and so are a great fit for one another, and from this base we believe that together we can grow in impact in supporting parents and working with more schools to provide counselling services across the country. We would not be able to do this apart, but we can with Fegans as part of Spurgeons.

That is why we are excited about Fegans becoming part of Spurgeons on 1st July. It will mean that we can begin to implement one part of Spurgeons longer-term plans to make a greater impact on a greater need, together as one charity.

Fegans will no longer function as an independent charity but Spurgeons has agreed that two of Fegans five trustees will join the Spurgeons Board of Trustees. We cannot incorporate more Fegans Trustees at this time because Spurgeons Articles of Association only allows a Board of 12 members in total. The appointment of new trustees to Spurgeons is a formal process, and we expect two Fegans Trustees, Ali Collins Fegans chair, and David Buchan to be voted on to the Spurgeons Board at the next meeting in July.

We really appreciate your support of Spurgeons vision — a shared ambition with Fegans – to give the growing number of vulnerable children and young people a home life that is loving, peaceful and safe so they can flourish.

Integral to Fegans transferring into Spurgeons is a shared ambition to model and reflect our Christian faith through the work we do with children and families. Being able to shine brightly as a Christian children’s charity draws on the prayers and giving of thousands of faithful supporters across the country.

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Spurgeons has undertaken a comprehensive due diligence process that includes a thorough financial assessment of Fegans present position and the value and potential of the work going forward. While Fegans services are currently running at a deficit, they bring current and potential assets which will cover their projected deficits for the foreseeable/near future, and Spurgeons is confident they will become a sustainable part of the charity’s vision to see children and young people enjoy a home life that is loving, peaceful and safe so they can flourish.