Carefree Kids, the charity, was established in 2004 and aims to help improve the emotional well-being of babies, children, young people and their parents/carers, mainly but not exclusively in the London borough of Waltham Forest. Run by local people in non-bureaucratic ways, and using volunteers, we provide play therapy, arts therapies, training for school and other staff, study days and conferences. We aim to make all our services affordable, accessible, flexible, prompt and imaginative. 

We are a small, expanding, community-based charity, run by local people who live and/or work in the borough. All our services aim to be:

• affordable
• accessible
• acceptable
• prompt
• flexible
• imaginative
• non-bureaucratic.

We provide therapeutic services to children and adults who would otherwise be very unlikely to receive any, delivered mainly by volunteers who otherwise would be very unlikely to have this opportunity – local people helping local children.

At the time of writing (November 2007), the services we offer include:

• individual play therapy for troubled children in primary schools
• therapy in our Mobile Play Therapy Bus when a school lacks a suitable room
• arts therapists at a secondary school
• at least three study days a year
• an annual conference in March
• training for volunteers, foster carers and professionals in play therapy and therapeutic responses to children
• publicising the work of Gallions primary school, Beckton, which teaches through the arts and Philosophy for Children
• one-to-one support and counselling for parents and carers.
• a course for teenagers: ‘Meeting the Emotional Needs of your Future Babies and Children and Yourselves as Parents’
• individual counselling for school staff after school.