Trust In Us History

Malachi Trust was founded in 1991 to support and give advocacy to children affected by family breakdown. The founders of the Trust, Gordon and Lyn Lee, from their community work background, recognised that in every school in which they had worked, there were children who had gained a reputation for disruptive behaviour.

In almost every case, a disturbed family experience held those same children in common. Interventions with challenging children had tended to be behaviour focused; often relying on punitive intervention or some form of reward based system. There was little evidence of any serious attempt to look behind the behaviour for the underlying causes.

In an attempt to give advocacy, and to meet the deeper unrecognised needs of each child, and to support the teaching process, Gordon and Lyn developed an approach that placed engagement as a priority. Using class based, family themed projects, they were able to form relationships with difficult and challenging children within their class groups, thus avoiding the risk of further stigmatising and alienating the child. By engaging children in this radical new approach, sound relationships were formed which enabled effective follow up work to take place with both the child and the child's parents/carers.

In the early years, it was extremely difficult to identify funding sources for this type of therapeutic work which is considered necessary in many cases, although in recent years, extensive research at national level has placed family support work as one of the government's highest priorities.