Announcing our Partnership with The Honeypot Children's Charity

Last night, Boris announced further relaxation rules surrounding the lockdown and the last of the coronavirus briefings. As many of us start to put our lives back in order and return to the new normal, in an eerily strange way, the height of the coronavirus lockdown feels like it was an age away.

The lockdown has had such a profound impact on all of us. I can't even begin to imagine it and my heart goes out to those who had lost loved ones. For me personally, when I think back to the lockdown days, I mainly remember the positives. How we were all so focused on kindness and helping each other; building closer relationships with the local community; the national applause as a thank you; and all the time that Elin, Gareth and I had together.

Perhaps it's because of Elin and our young nieces and nephews, but throughout this period, Gareth and I became incredibly aware of the well-being and mental health of children. The impact that the coronavirus was having on them and how this would later become the invisible attacker. As we discussed this with friends and family, many working in the NHS, it became apparent to us that children's mental health was more in need of support than ever before.

It was around this time that Gareth and I were introduced to The Honeypot Children's Charity, who are focused on supporting young carers between the ages of 5-12 years. These incredible children have no time to be children, as they are the main carers in their household, caring for sickly and disabled parents and often younger siblings too. Honeypot are the only charity in the UK that provides vital annual respite breaks, ongoing outreach services and a range of other support services for these selfless, young carers. 

It is therefore with great pleasure that we have confirmed our partnership with this incredible children's charity.

A recent report carried out by the BBC News and Nottingham University highlighted that there are as many as 800,000 young carers in the UK between the ages of 5-18. Honeypot’s age group (5-12) account for as many as 300,000 children.

The care duties that these children provide and carry out alone are of a nature that government legislates children should not be doing, such as administering medicine, attending to the personal hygiene needs of an adult, heavy housework, lifting and heavy shopping. 

With many of them caring for up to 50 hours a week (50 hours a week!), it's little wonder that these children suffer with anxiety, stress, mental health problems, poor self-esteem, low confidence and poor education performance.

As many of you know, the lockdown inspired me to design our Hoxton Rainbow Trainers that symbolise Hope, Love and Peace. You can read my blog post here. With the sale of each pair of our Rainbow trainers, we'll be donating £20 to Honeypot, to help raise money for children's mental health.

I've also since added face masks to our collection and we will be donating all the profits from the sale of each mask to Honeypot.

Thank you so, so much in advance for your support - it means a huge amount as always - and together, we look forward to making a little difference to these inspirational, brave young people 👭