Our mission is to inspire, challenge and affirm children and young people so that they can grow in confidence and maturity, make their dreams a reality and contribute to the community. We do this through our Play, Sport and Youth programmes, and a variety of training and volunteering initiatives.

The context and culture in which the Winch operates has changed dramatically since our inception in the early 1970s. Attitudes towards civil society, the debate around charity vs justice, the evolution of the voluntary sector, scrutiny of young people’s role and status and plenty more have been tossed about by decades of economic, political and social change. Major cultural events, from Arthur Scargill’s miners to Thatcher’s ‘short sharp shocks’ on youth justice to materialism in the Nineties to statutory-voluntary micromanagement in the Noughties have been received and responded to by the Winch in a myriad of different ways.

Despite such change, our philosophy at the Winch has never deviated. It has simply been that we seek to