An Interview with Founder and CEO of First Days Children’s Charity: Emma Cantrell MBE 

“There’s so much judgement and stereotyping of people who need help from a charity, but you will never come across more resourceful, intelligent, brilliant people who, for whatever reason, can’t afford stuff but that doesn’t mean they’re not fantastic. “

Emma Cantrell is a force to be reckoned with. She is highly intelligent, passionate, driven; a born leader. But above all the brilliant and admirable qualities this CEO possesses, the one that shines through and underpins everything she does; is her love. For the families her charity supports on a daily basis, for the work she does, and for the people in her life. A genuine love for her community and a deep desire to change the lives of those that need her charity’s help. 

In 2013 Cantrell founded First Days Children’s Charity, helping families across the Wokingham area who are struggling to provide everyday essentials for their children. From baby clothes and school uniforms to beds and cots, the charity has helped 25,000 children and distributed over 500 tonnes of donated goods since its inception. 
Cantrell was awarded an MBE for her work in June this year.

The self-confessed do-gooder and mother of two describes the story behind First Days, what her message to the government would be and where her immense drive comes from. 

1.) Why did you decide to start First Days?

I was working for Ealing Borough Council in their children’s early years department running children’s centres. I found children’s centres so inspiring, they were fantastic, I loved spending time in them. Back in the day before all the funding was cut, they had toy libraries, they had DWP workers who’d get down on the floor and play, whilst they were playing we’d be chatting to the parents about whether they were getting the right benefits, they were just really aspirational places. They took the time, and it was mostly mums, to build their confidence, to grow.
I found there was still this practical need. We’d notice that someone had stopped coming to the centre, ring them, and realise it was because their buggy had broken and they just couldn’t get there on the bus.

I left there and had my two children. I had these two babies, 20 month old Joni and ten week old Wilbur, and my neighbours just kept turning up with bags of baby clothes, it was lovely. My husband at the time called it middle class fly-tipping because it was just a really polite way to empty their loft. 
I sat there thinking “Right I know lots of people in Wokingham…”. I called this woman who I knew had been doing some research about the needs of single parents. I said, “Look, I’ve got this hunch that especially lone parents in this area won’t be able to afford stuff.” She said, “Oh my goodness, that’s what my research is gonna say.” There’s pretty good emotional support but practically they’re struggling. So I said “I’ve got this idea, I’m going to set up this charity and see how it works..”. 
There was this local grant funder who said if you have an idea, you can apply, and they’ll see if they can give you some money. So I wrote this one page of A4 of what the idea was, the difference it would make, and then I got the money. 

I had a ten week old baby. I’ll never forget, I’ve got this image of having a baby on the boob, one running around and a laptop on my knee, Googling: “How do you start a charity? How do you make a website?” 
I started this Facebook page, essentially what I set up was like a baby bank. And there’s loads of them now, but at the time, people were like “Sorry, what are you doing? This is really weird.”

I remember talking to the local paper, the first article, the subtext was like “Crazy woman has crazy idea…Give her your baby stuff!”
People were almost quite angry that I was even suggesting that there was a need! I did a speech and this guy hunted me down afterwards. He marched across the hall to talk to me: “Where are these people then? Where are they?”. So I just said “They’re probably living in the roads that you don’t go down, they probably go to the places that you don’t go.”  

For some reason, this funder took this punt on this. I had experience, I’d worked with vulnerable people, I kind of knew what I was doing. But I did not know what I was getting into. 

I find it very difficult if there’s something I’m passionate about to not do something about it: Children having everything they need. If I can see that I could impact that, I can’t sit back and not do it. 

Growing up, my basic needs were absolutely met but my parents didn’t have much money. I’m not saying I grew up in poverty at all but I always had secondhand school uniform and hand me downs. I always felt different and I really understand the impact of feeling different. I was different from other girls my age, I wasn’t into Take That or Barbies, I was reading 1984 when I was 11. 
But I also felt materially different. In an affluent area like Windsor [where Cantrell grew up], everyone had the Reebok Classics and the Umbro backpack, and I didn’t have any of it. I understood why I didn’t, my parents couldn’t afford it. But it made me feel like less of a person. 
And that’s just someone who had a nice life, so I can only imagine how the children we support must feel when they don’t have a bed to sleep in.
That’s another element of why I’m so passionate about First Days’ work, because I know what it’s like to feel like you don’t fit and the embarrassment and shame and all of those things.

2.) What are the greatest challenges running First Days? 

One of the biggest challenges, is the mindset that a lot of people have about charities. 

I do a lot of pitches to big corporates. But I’m asking people to give their money or their time for a product that they’re never going to see. That’s what’s really hard, it’s a sales pitch, just to ask you to be a good person, to be responsible and to take responsibility for other people. The problem with trying to sell poverty to people is a lot of people immediately go “Well, how did they get themselves in that situation?” So there’s a lot of work to do changing hearts and minds. 

I ran the charity [Support for Sick Newborns and Their Parents] in the John Radcliffe hospital on the neonatal unit and it really wasn’t difficult to get people to give their money to sick babies, because it’s indiscriminate. It’s no one’s fault that the baby’s sick, you can have photos of very, very poorly looking babies, and no one sees it as exploitative. Parents really want to tell their story. The parents often become the fundraisers, when you have a sick child, people have this compulsion to raise money to try and do something. And that doesn’t happen with charities like First Days, the beneficiaries are very unlikely to ever become the donors.

I’m selling it to people who don’t think it’s their responsibility. So that’s a big challenge, especially in somewhere like Wokingham, with an older population.
The questions I’m asked by older white men are:
“What does your husband do?” – I don’t have a husband, and I think: What’s that got to do with this charity?
I’m always asked: 
“Are you a volunteer?” – No, goodwill does not put food on the table. 
“Why do you need to be paid?” –  Because I have to feed my children.
“How do you know the people you’re supporting aren’t pulling the wool over your eyes?”

I have to have so much patience to answer those questions with a level of respect for the person asking them because I find it really difficult. Ultimately, I end up saying to people, look, there might be some people who don’t need the help that they’ve come to us for, who knows, people might go and sell on things that we’ve given them or they might take advantage..But all I say to them at the end of it is: Would you swap lives with them? Because if the answer is no, then I don’t know what your problem is.

Small charities are real businesses that do meaningful work and they need to be respected as that. And we’re often seen as “Aw you run a charity, that’s lovely”. But actually, it’s really not lovely.

We spend so much time trying to get people to understand why the need exists, and who we’re helping, and I hate it, because sadly the stories that get the most response are when someone has found themselves in need because there’s been a death or an illness. But actually, often it’s people who’ve got themselves into a financial mess, into debt. They’ve lost a job and they haven’t been able to get one with the same pay, and I’m sorry, but we all live to our means. 

I think as our generation become older, I’m hoping there will be a cultural shift in terms of understanding.

3.) If you could tell one story of a family you’ve helped, what comes to mind? 

So there’s a few…A long time ago I had one of those massive big beasts of a double buggy. I walked into town with it every day, it kept me sane, I loved it. Obviously I gave it to my charity when I finished with it. 

We had this guy coming in to pick up some clothes, he was a single dad to two year old twin boys, their mum didn’t want to be part of their lives. Really, really sad. I think both of boys had additional needs, it was a lot. I looked out of the window and saw him coming, and I was like, “he’s got my buggy”. I’d put a gigantic scratch on the side of it chucking it in the car, so I knew it was my buggy, it was very distinctive. 

This guy came in and I said, “I can’t believe it but you’ve got my buggy. I donated this.” And he said, “Before I got this, I couldn’t leave the house, we didn’t for two weeks. Our previous buggy broke.” He said the boys were wild and he couldn’t contain them. “I couldn’t leave the house safely and then someone dropped this..” I had to leave the room to go and cry in the toilet because to see it come to life like that. 

When people drop stuff off to us, they’re essentially clearing out their shed, they’re getting stuff out of their house and what they don’t see is the impact of that. If that man hadn’t received that buggy, he wouldn’t have been able to leave the house. He was going stir crazy, his kids weren’t being stimulated, it was an awful existence for them. And just that simple act of giving them that buggy and the fact that was my buggy. It just felt really meaningful. 

One thing I found really harrowing, one morning a guy rang up and said, “I’ve heard you give out beds, I don’t know if I qualify…” Again, it was a single dad. “My wife’s not around, we’ve been housed, me and my two kids, but we don’t have any furniture. We don’t have beds, but it’s okay, it’s not urgent. I don’t need them, because I’ve made them beds.” I just heard one of my team say, “What do you mean, you’ve made them beds?” I thought this is interesting. He said, “Well I flattened out all the packing boxes, so they’re not on the floor, they’re on these boxes, so it’s not urgent.” I was just heartbroken. I think the thing that broke me was that he was saying it wasn’t urgent. He thought “we can wait…we don’t need it as much as the next person”. To be able to actually get beds to those children that day was incredible. 

We completely and utterly take for granted the provision that we have for our children, and until you’ve seen it, or heard those stories…People don’t believe me. I’ll say, “Some children don’t have beds” and people will say “Really?”. It is unbelievable. We had a mother and daughter who shared a coat. Whoever was more cold would get to wear the coat. 
It’s a basic human need to have a good night’s sleep and especially for children. How would you expect children to learn at school if they’ve not had a good night’s sleep and some breakfast, it’s heartbreaking.

4.) Charities are closing due to lack of funding, what would your message be to the government? What needs to change in order for charities to survive? 

This is really really important. During COVID, and when the Ukrainian war started, the government put loads and loads of money into small charities. During COVID, I rung the funding officer for the National Lottery and said I need £60,000, and it was in the charity’s bank account by the end of the day and that is not how charity funding works. The government proved during both COVID and the Ukrainian crisis that when they need money they can find it. 

I am feeling abandoned by the government, because the cost of living crisis, no matter how much you want to dress it up, is a deeply political issue. And there are deep deep prejudices that people feel towards people who can’t afford things.

So even though everyone is experiencing increased prices, people still think that if you can’t afford the basics, it’s your own fault. And that’s certainly how the government have responded to us, which is: we do not need to help in this situation, because it’s basically sink or swim. And they’re very happy for people to sink, because the dirty end of capitalism works best in that way, where there’s a lot of people who are very poor.

My message to government is: we [small charities] have become the welfare state, small charities have become the safety net, we are picking up the pieces. The government used to exist in this space, and local authority funding has been cut to the bare bare bones over the last 13 years. So they don’t have any money to help out the charities in their community either.

Central Government funding doesn’t exist to small charities, unless you’re delivering a very specific contracted thing, which is very different. The welfare state’s disappeared, benefits aren’t paying enough and low income is far too low.

The demand for our work has doubled. The need, and the complexity of situations that families are finding themselves in has got more extreme, and my message is that this is storing up a generation of problems for the future. Children who grew up in poverty are far more likely to be in poverty as adults. 

And then you will have even worse demand on housing, on health, on out of work benefits, all of those things, I am convinced that if we don’t intervene now, and sort out this cost of living crisis, it will mean that children will turn into adults who can’t reach their potential for whatever reason. 

So I think the message is: this is really serious. This isn’t just a load of charities saying: we want to carry on our work. The work is really vital. And I think it needs to be taken so much more seriously. Every small charity I’ve spoken to just feels abandoned, and no one’s got any money.

We used to rely on about £100,000 a year of income from the general public donating. I’m forecasting about £20k this year, which is huge, but that means we will not be able to help anywhere near the same number of children at a time when they’re needed the most.

Someone from the government needs to listen – I don’t think it will happen. I don’t think this government have compassion or empathy. I don’t think they care.

I spent probably seven years banging on the local authority’s door saying “There’s loads of children in poverty here” and they weren’t listening. Then when I ran the COVID food hub, I had a hotline to the decision makers. I was able to really help them understand what was going on on the ground.

There are about 5,000 children who live below the poverty line in Wokingham, there’s probably another 10,000 whose parents are really struggling, racking up debts, not able to give their children everything they need. But it’s a manageable number. It’s not like being in an area where 70% of the population are below the poverty line. So our gift in Wokingham is that we can fix it, which is the really frustrating thing; we can make a real meaningful difference here. We could genuinely eradicate that need in this area. And it feels like it’s so close, but so far. That’s what makes my blood boil. I just feel like we can do this.

I was speaking to an incredibly wealthy person this week, a massive philanthropist. He was saying that he knows so many people who aren’t [philanthropic] and that he can’t get on the topic at a dinner party because he gets so angry that people will sit there with their incredible wealth, criticise the government or whoever and not bother to try and understand it or try and fix it when they could! 

Lewis [Cantrell’s partner] always tells me that if we win the lottery, I’m not allowed near the money because I’ll just give it all away! Like, how much do we really need to survive? I’ll take this tiny bit…

5.) What made you decide to study Social Policy at The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)? 

Throughout school I was always interested in people and how the world works. I studied politics, history and economics at A-Level and the whole time I was drawn to how we help people and how we can use policy to change people’s lives; which is a really strange thing for an 18 year old to be interested in, really weird. But I was always interested in politics, from a really really young age. 

When I was in year 7 at school, there was the 1997 general election and my brother created a really jokey political party with his friend, I managed to run a whole election campaign, in this mock general election, and get loads of votes for this fake political party.

I think the 1997 general election got me really interested in politics because it was that big change of government, it was really exciting. Then I did work experience when I was 16 in the House of Commons. It felt really normal at the time. I had a parliamentary pass for a week.

Then somehow, in sixth-form, my school got me work experience at the European Parliament in Brussels, which is mad. I always thought I would go into actual party politics. I thought I’d leave University and get a job for a political party or for an MP, that sort of thing. 

I realised during my degree, and this sounds so Miss World, that I just wanted to help people. I wanted to use my brain somehow to help people, so I got a job after university in a drug and alcohol charity which was amazingly mind-expanding.

My job was going into rehabs and interviewing the clients about their experience of the rehab, it was like quality-control. It meant I got their whole life stories and what became really clear to me in those two years when I was doing that job was that there’s always a reason behind the reason behind the reason and that kind of set me on this path of: Intervening in children’s lives is the way to break that and it was always, 99% of the time, routed in some sort of childhood trauma, so it was really really interesting. 

I just wish other people had that opportunity to really get to know people outside of their sphere and understand their lives. I think the two things we’re lacking in our society are empathy and compassion in bucket loads. If policy was grounded in empathy…

6.) You’re an incredibly driven person. Where does this drive come from? What might have shaped this?

One of the things I spent a lot of time discussing with my therapist was “Why can I not stop working? Where does it come from, that drive?”. 

It’s really interesting, I think it’s the best and the worst thing about me. It’s absolutely brilliant and I’ve achieved a lot and I get great results because I’m so driven, but some of it definitely comes from never feeling good enough as a child. Ever ever ever. Like never feeling like I’m meeting my parents’ expectations. They set the bar really high, I was under pressure to do really really well at school and I did, but at the cost of my mental health. I think that feeling of never feeling good enough, really did drive me, but alongside that, both my parents worked in really compassionate jobs; my dad was a pastor of a church and my mum was a midwife. They both had jobs where it was just really normal to be looking after people. There was a really really high level of compassion and it was almost baked into how I was brought up, the empathy, compassion and loving people. 

When that whole “Be Kind” movement happened a few years ago, it really irked me because I was like no that’s not enough! Kindness isn’t enough! Love is what we should be doing.

My dad brought me up constantly telling me: “Your life has got a purpose, there’s a reason you’re here, do something with it.” (It had a religious edge to it, which I have extricated the message from.)
I did feel under a lot of pressure, but having worked through that in therapy, I now think it’s amazing that some people don’t tap into what their purpose is, what their desires are, and kind of go through life not pursuing that. 

I think that drive, it’s all the classic things: I’m a middle child, I’m very very competitive, I always want to be the winner. My mum tells me when I was a child, I basically would not do anything unless it was fun, and I’m still the same now. In how I work, if it’s not exciting me, I just can’t do it, it has to be fun and exciting. I don’t stay still, I can’t just settle, my charity is always evolving and changing and trying to make a bigger impact. 

7.) You’re quite forthcoming with your political views, do you ever think about going into politics? 

I always thought I would do 20 years in the charity sector and then go into politics. Well I’m now almost 20 years in the charity sector and I can’t imagine anything worse than going into politics right now. One of the main problems is that there isn’t a political party I can sign up to at this moment, in terms of my values. I find party politics really hard because you have to agree to everything that your party is doing, I find that very difficult, I feel like there’s a lack of integrity or something. I think I’m learning that that’s actually fine, within politics, you know there’s lots of variation within parties. 

I don’t know if I’ve got a thick enough skin for the abuse that women get in politics. I’ve very very rarely had anyone be nasty to me online, but when it’s happened, it’s been devastating, I cannot get perspective on it! 

I wouldn’t discount it, because it is the place from a policy point of view where you can make the most difference. I do think I’d be good at it. 

Let’s get this government out and then see what politics looks like. Where things were a year ago with such high levels of populism and the way Johnson ran the country, the kind of populist agenda, so extreme…(I would never join the Tory party just to be clear..) But I wouldn’t even want to be anywhere near it, so toxic. I’d never say never. There’s loads of time.

8.) If you could summarise your values, what would they be?

There are two things. It’s always going into every situation with an understanding that there’s more going on behind the scenes than you’ll ever know. That curiosity and open-mindedness that prevents you from being judgmental about things. We all make judgments, categorising things and making judgments is part of how the human brain works. I make it my life’s work to keep front and centre that I don’t know what’s going on in people’s lives. 

A woman laid into me in the Waitrose car park and I just wanted to say to her like “Who hurt you today? What’s happened? It’s okay you don’t need to shout at me about it!” 

So I think it’s about that deep compassion and deep empathy for people and situations. No one wants to be judged, there are lots of things about people that people are surprised to hear, even talking about going to therapy, people are like “Oh why? You’re fine!”

I think that’s the number one thing, and that boils down to just loving people. 

People think often, because I’m really outspoken and I’m not afraid to speak truth to power, I’m not afraid to say what I think, that I just hate people with opposing views or I’m not going to talk to you if you’re a Tory or whatever, but I really am, because we will connect over something. If people have got an opposing view they’re either not as far down the road in thinking as they could be or there’s a reason for it. 

I think there’s so much more going on than we’ll ever know and that’s the thing that I try and live my life believing. 

9.) What do you love about your work?

The fantastic thing about being a small charity is you can react really quickly to emerging situations, to things happening, you can just get on and do it. You don’t have to spend six months designing something in order to pass it through X number of committees to get it signed off. We can just think right, now’s the time, we’re going to do this. Obviously we have a strategy and plans and all of those things but you can be reactive. So when there is a pandemic or a refugee crisis or something, you take action really really quickly. I love that. 

I love the creativity of my job. Being persuasive, forming arguments, creating online content, coming up with new ideas, different ways of doing things, I love being disruptive in a positive way. 

The thing I hate the most, is when anyone talks about how things have always been done, that was in the past, we are moving on. Just because it’s always been done that way doesn’t mean it’s good. I love bringing that level of disruption and “How can we do things differently.”

I think really deeply about the work we do, so I could say “We tell families where to go to get help and we give out stuff”, but actually what that does is it restores dignity, choice and power to families. It’s thinking on that level that I love about my work. Being able to get people to see that and the importance of giving people choice. I love getting up in front of a room full of people and talking about it…like this..I just love it. 

I spend far too much time with the families we support, because I just love being around them, they’re the best people. There’s so much judgement and stereotyping of people who need help from a charity, but you will never come across more resourceful, intelligent, brilliant people who, for whatever reason, can’t afford stuff but that doesn’t mean they’re not fantastic. 

10.) What is your favourite bit of life advice or something you live by? 

I think the Michelle Obama “When they go low, we go high” is one of my favourites. I think she said that addressing her children. That’s how she’s brought them up. That’s something I think about a lot; it always feels less grubby to take the high ground on things and not sink to the level of people who are critical or difficult. 

Nye Bevan, the architect of the NHS, said “The purpose of getting power is to give it away” and for me that sums up everything I try and do, because that encapsulates acknowledging your privilege, so knowing that people are given more power just by birthright or whatever, they’ve not earned it, I don’t think power can be earned. 
The re-distribution of that power back to the people who deserve it and need it. 

In my work, one of the things that’s taken away from you when you don’t have money is power over your situation. So I see it as our absolute duty to give that power back and I think it encapsulates that re-distribution of everything, re-distribution of wealth, of intellect…That’s definitely what I have in a frame on the wall.

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