There is something I think we need to talk about more when we talk about supporting children and families facing hardship: choice.

It might sound like a relatively insignificant consideration when a family is worrying about whether their child has a bed to sleep in, shoes that don’t leak or a coat warm enough to get them through winter. When the need is that immediate, surely what matters is simply getting something – anything – into their hands?

I don’t think it is that simple.

Over the years, I’ve met hundreds of children and families living through circumstances most of us would struggle to imagine. I’ve walked into homes with mould on the walls and no bedding. We’ve supported children who have slept in their new winter coats because they didn’t have a duvet. We hear from teachers quietly washing children’s uniforms at school and social workers desperately trying to find basic items for families who have reached crisis point.

One of the things I’ve learned from those experiences is that poverty doesn’t just take away material things. Very quickly, it starts taking away choices too.

What food can I buy this week? Can I put the heating on tonight? Can my child go on that school trip? Can I replace the shoes they’ve outgrown? Can I afford the bus fare? Will Santa be able to come this year?

When the answer to almost every ordinary question is dictated by what you can afford rather than what your family needs, the ability to make decisions about your own life gradually disappears. I think we therefore need to be incredibly careful that, when we step in to help, we don’t inadvertently take away another choice in the process.

Help shouldn’t come at the expense of dignity

Last Christmas, Yorkshire Children’s Charity supported a six-year-old girl I’ll call Peggy. Her parents hadn’t had positive experiences of the education system themselves and, as a result, her school had found it incredibly difficult to engage with the family. Peggy’s attendance was just 63%.

Through our Winter Support Campaign, the school was able to offer Mum and Dad the opportunity to choose Christmas presents, not only for Peggy but for her siblings too. Rather than receiving a generic bag of gifts chosen by somebody who had never met their children, they were able to choose things they knew their children would actually like.

It sounds incredibly simple, but something changed. A barrier came down, communication between the family and the school improved and trust began to develop. Less than 12 months later, Peggy’s attendance had risen to 98%.

I’ve met Peggy, and you only need to spend a short amount of time with her to understand why that matters. When she is in school, we know she is warm and fed. She is learning and spending time with her friends. She is surrounded by teachers and other professionals who can notice when something isn’t quite right and step in when she needs help. Most importantly, every day she spends in that classroom gives her the possibility of a different future.

All of that began with something as ordinary as Christmas presents and a school giving two parents some choice in a life where choices had become incredibly limited.

For me, that gets to the heart of what meaningful support should look like. Needing help doesn’t make somebody any less of a parent. Being unable to afford Christmas presents doesn’t mean somebody else suddenly knows your child better than you do, and financial hardship should never mean surrendering your dignity or your right to make decisions for your own family.

The people closest to children need to be heard

Choice and autonomy aren’t just important for families. We also need to give greater trust to the teachers, social workers and other frontline professionals who understand what is actually happening in children’s lives.

At Yorkshire Children’s Charity, we are deliberately needs-led. That distinction matters enormously to me because it means we start by listening rather than assuming.

A teacher knows when a child suddenly stops coming to school. They notice when the same pair of shoes is being worn long after they have become too small, when a child never brings their PE kit, when they arrive exhausted or hungry, or when their behaviour suddenly changes. A social worker may know that a family doesn’t simply need ‘more stuff’; they need one very specific thing that could make everyday life manageable again.

Those professionals see what sits behind the statistics, but too often we expect them to navigate overstretched systems, shrinking budgets and endless processes before they can solve what might actually be a relatively straightforward problem.

We need to listen to them, trust their judgement and, crucially, give them somewhere to turn when they identify a need.

Our own evidence demonstrates why that matters. Last year, Yorkshire Children’s Charity’s Winter Support Campaign was independently evaluated by the University of Leeds. Researchers found improvements in pupils’ readiness to learn, confidence and sense of belonging, alongside improvements in attendance and stronger relationships between families and schools. Teachers also reported that the programme helped them identify and support vulnerable families, including those whose needs had previously been hidden.

That is why giving a child a coat can never simply be about giving them a coat. It might mean they get through the school gates on a cold morning. Being in school means they are learning, seeing their friends and potentially receiving the hot meal they rely on. It also means they are somewhere warm and safe, surrounded by adults who can spot when something isn’t right.

Practical help can open doors that forms, meetings and interventions sometimes cannot.

We cannot measure meaningful help in boxes

There is another distinction I think is becoming increasingly important.

There is an enormous opportunity to redistribute products that would otherwise go to waste and get them into the hands of families who need them, and we should absolutely seize it. But we cannot confuse distributing more things with helping more people. The two are not automatically the same.

A warehouse full of donated products cannot tell us that a seven-year-old needs a pair of size-three school shoes. It cannot guarantee that, when 3,000 children need winter coats, there will be 3,000 coats in the correct sizes sitting on the shelves. It cannot buy a specialist wheelchair or sensory equipment, and it cannot always respond to the family whose desperate need simply doesn’t happen to match what has been donated that week.

That is why needs-led support must remain at the heart of what we do.

Rather than starting with the question, “What have we got that we can give you?”, we need to start by asking, “What do you need?”

There is a world of difference between those two approaches. One is about distributing products. The other is about solving problems.

I don’t want Yorkshire Children’s Charity’s success to be measured simply by the number of coats, beds, shoes or Christmas presents we distribute. Of course those numbers matter, and every one represents a child receiving something they need, but what happens afterwards matters far more.

Did that child get back into school? Did they sleep properly that night? Did a parent feel able to speak to a teacher they had previously avoided? Did that conversation reveal another need or safeguarding concern? Did a family receive support before hardship became crisis?

Ultimately, did our intervention make something better?

Those are the outcomes we should be measuring.

We all have a role to play

For teachers and social workers, my message is simple: please keep telling us what children need. You are often the people who see hardship first, who understand the complexity behind it and who know when something seemingly small could make an enormous difference. Organisations like ours need your knowledge and your judgement if we are going to provide the right help rather than simply the easiest help.

For charities, funders and businesses, I think we need to challenge ourselves to consider not only what we give, but how we give it. Wherever possible, we should give families choices, listen before assuming and design support around the people receiving it rather than around what is easiest for us to provide. We should never make somebody feel they have to perform their hardship to prove they are deserving of kindness, and we shouldn’t mistake gratitude for evidence that we have got the support right.

For individuals, there are so many ways to help. You can donate, volunteer, offer your skills, introduce us to a business that could support our work or simply share what we are doing so that the teacher, social worker or family who needs us knows we are here. Sometimes the difference between a family coping and a family reaching crisis point is far smaller than we imagine.

And for all of us, I think there is a wider challenge.

When we talk about poverty, it is very easy to reduce people to statistics, income thresholds or lists of things they don’t have. In doing so, we risk forgetting that every statistic represents an individual family with its own circumstances, relationships, challenges and hopes for the future.

There is no single box we can hand out that fixes that. There is no programme that solves every problem and there certainly isn’t one type of family who needs help.

What we can do is listen to the people closest to those families. We can trust the professionals who know these children. We can respond to what somebody actually needs rather than simply what happens to be available, and wherever possible, we can preserve the choices and independence that hardship has already taken too much of.

Because dignity shouldn’t depend on your bank balance, and needing help should never mean losing your voice.

We cannot remove every challenge a family faces, nor can we solve child poverty through charity alone. But when life becomes impossibly hard, we can make sure the help we offer does more than put another product into another box.

We can make it personal. We can make it meaningful. We can give people a say in what happens next.

And sometimes, that small piece of control can be the beginning of something much bigger.