When the Budget Breaks the Safety Net

Yesterday was one of those strange days that stays with you.

It left me feeling deeply reflective, deeply grateful, and if I’m honest, deeply concerned too.

The morning was spent in a school I’ve known for a long time. A school where children are safe, known and cared for. A school that has weathered hard seasons and kept going anyway. Over the years, I’ve watched staff there carry enormous pressure as they try to provide not only education, but also emotional safety, stability and support for children who desperately need it. They are expected to hold so much, with less and less funding to make it possible. And increasingly, I’m watching senior leaders trying to hold everything together while the pressure breaks their hearts from every side.

Then in the afternoon, I went to another school for my final session after four years of working with them.

That school has been a huge support to Hope’s Therapy Dogs. Their headteacher has championed our work, spoken about us within her collaborative, and backed us wholeheartedly over the years. So when she told me that their budget could no longer stretch to continue funding us, it was hard for both of us. Hard because the need has not gone away. Hard because the children still need support. Hard because schools are being forced into impossible decisions.

And yet, even in that conversation, her concern was not just for her own school. She was asking where I was going to find more schools. She understood that Hope’s Therapy Dogs may be values-led and deeply mission-driven, but we still have bills to pay. We still have staff to pay. We still have to survive in order to keep serving others.

That concern was typical of her. Typical of her team. Typical of the kind of school they are.

They care well. They lead well. They love their children well.

I am genuinely gutted that our contract there has come to an end, but we are all determined to find our way back to one another somehow.

At the end of the session, the headteacher took me and the play therapist, who was also finishing for the same reason, into the hall. We stood in front of a room full of children. She asked them to put their hands up if they had worked with “dog therapy”.

A classroom full of hands went up.

Then she said those weren’t all the children we had helped. There were more.

That moment stopped me in my tracks.

Because sometimes, when you are in the day-to-day of this work, moving from one child to the next, one session to the next, one school to the next, you don’t always stop and see the bigger picture. But standing there, looking at those children, I felt the weight of it in the best and heaviest possible way.

Those lives matter.

Those children matter.

And that is why we are here.

That is why we do what we do.

Before I left, I was given beautiful flowers, chocolates, prosecco, and the most gorgeous handmade cards from the children. It was such a kind, thoughtful gesture. But more than that, it summed up the relationship we have with the schools we work with, and particularly with this one. They went above and beyond, not because they had to, but because that is who they are. Even under pressure. Even while losing something they value. Even while carrying far too much already.

And that is exactly the problem.

Schools should not be left carrying this alone.

When support like ours is removed, it is not because children no longer need help. It is because the money is no longer there. The need remains. The anxiety remains. The dysregulation remains. The grief, trauma, pressure and emotional overwhelm do not disappear because a budget line has been cut.

What disappears is access.

Access to trusted therapeutic relationships.
Access to calm.
Access to connection.
Access to the kind of support that can help a child stay in class, regulate emotion, build trust, feel safe, and begin to cope.

These children do not need less support.
They need more.

And if schools cannot fund that support alone, then we need external partners, funders, businesses and community champions to step in and help make it possible.

Because this is not a “nice extra”.

This is part of the safety net.

This is part of what helps children stay emotionally well enough to learn, relate, cope and grow.

If we are serious about the mental health of our nation, then this has to change.

Today’s children are tomorrow’s adults.

We need them to arrive in adulthood well.

We need them to know what safety feels like.
We need them to know that support exists.
We need them to have had the chance to build emotional resilience before life asks more of them.
And we need a system that does not wait until crisis point before help is offered.

At Hope’s Therapy Dogs, we have seen the difference early, ethical, relational support can make.

We have seen children who could not engage begin to trust.
We have seen anxious children find calm.
We have seen distressed children find connection.
We have seen schools breathe out when the right support is in place.

But too often now, excellent schools are losing services they know their children need simply because the funding no longer stretches far enough.

That should concern all of us.

So this is my reflection after a strange and emotional day:
the work matters, the children matter, the schools matter, and the need is still very much here.

What is missing is not the evidence.
It is not the passion.
It is not the commitment from schools.

What is missing is sustainable funding.

And until that changes, too many children will go without the emotional and mental health support they need, not because it wouldn’t help, but because no one could afford to keep it in place.

That cannot be the future we accept.

If you are a business, funder, organisation or community leader who wants to be part of changing that story, we would love to hear from you.

Because helping children now is not only an act of compassion.
It is an investment in the future of this country.