From the Diary of Gen Dearman

A charity chief executive on why a funding gap is not a demand gap, and what it takes to never turn a child away. For the funders, donors and businesses who want to know where their money would land.

“I came into work today and the play floor was empty.” Gen Dearman wrote that at the end of a summer. After weeks “filled with adventures, laughter and unforgettable moments for disabled children,” she wrote, “the silence felt incredibly loud. And for a moment, it hit me and I couldn’t help but think, will I see more days like today? Is this what the future will look more like?”

The floor she was standing on belongs to Challengers, a charity in the South East of England that runs inclusive play and youth schemes for disabled children and young people, so that they can play, make friends and be included, and so that their parents get a break. It supports more than 900 families a year. It has more than 600 families on a waiting list for help it doesn’t have the funds to provide. The average family it does reach gets 72 hours of respite a year.

Gen is the charity’s Chief Executive Officer. She spent many years in the wider sector, as a campaigner at Business in the Community and in national operations at a STEM education charity, before taking on a frontline organisation that sees, in her words, “first-hand how decisions about funding and policy actually impact on families.” The argument she wants funders, donors and businesses to hear is a short one: a service that shrinks because the money ran out tells you nothing about whether it was needed.

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A Funding Challenge Is Not a Lack of Demand

In September Gen wrote that it was “a sad week for the UK’s social impact ecosystem.” Guardian Jobs and Reach Volunteering were closing, and the sector was “losing infrastructure. The kind of infrastructure that helps people find purpose-led work, enables charities to access vital skills, and connects organisations with people who want to make a difference.” Her post ended on a line she has since been asked to explain: “we shouldn’t mistake a funding challenge for a lack of demand.”

Asked why the sector keeps making that mistake, she calls it “a frustrating misconception and something I feel very strongly about. When a service reduces or closes because the funding is no longer there, this bears no relation to the demand for it.”

Reach is her example. The UK’s leading volunteering organisation announced earlier this year that it was preparing to close because of funding challenges, she says, “despite seeing record levels of activity, with nearly 6,000 trustees and skills-based volunteers recruited in 2025, contributing an estimated £60 million of professional expertise to charitable organisations.” One of the reasons Reach gave, she says, was that funding has become much harder to secure unless you fit “the neat tick boxes of funders,” many of whom now focus on very specific issues or particular geographical areas. A group of funders and donors then came together to secure Reach’s funding in the immediate future. Reach’s own account of the reversal says nine funders and donors pledged enough to keep it open until the end of 2028. “While this is fantastic news since volunteering is invaluable to charities, it doesn’t solve the wider funding issue that charities in the UK see,” Gen says. “Challengers included.”

She puts her own numbers beside it. More than 600 families on the waiting list. Over half of the families Challengers supports have experienced exclusion from other settings, “which clearly demonstrates the demand.” The services, she says, “aren’t ‘nice-to-haves’, they are essential for reducing social isolation, giving disabled children access to social activities, and offering parent carers vital respite.”

“There is a profound gap between what families need and the funding available. As public funding becomes less reliable and more competitive, the non-statutory services we provide become increasingly vulnerable. Yet those services can be the difference between a family coping and a family in crisis.”

Gen Dearman, Chief Executive Officer, Challengers

“So the question we need to ask isn’t whether the demand exists,” she says. “It very clearly does. The question is how can we create sustainable funding models that allow charitable organisations to meet more of it?” Part of what Challengers has to fund is a policy she says many similar organisations don’t keep.

Every Child Is Welcome, and What That Costs

“For us, non-exclusion means exactly that: Challengers will never exclude a child based on the complexity of their needs, the level of support they require, or their family’s financial situation.” Making it happen, Gen says, “requires commitment and training, and of course comes at a greater cost to the charity, which is why many similar organisations do exclude some children with complex additional needs from joining their services.”

The belief underneath it is plain. “We strongly believe that disabled children and young people should have the same opportunities to play, make friends and experience life as their non-disabled peers.” Play, she says, “is the foundation of so much”: it “increases confidence, teaches independence and social skills, and connects us with others and our world. Yet so many disabled children miss out on their fundamental right to play, simply because their needs are more complex.”

That exclusion has been counted. A 2015 public inquiry led by the charity Sense found that 51% of disabled children had been intentionally excluded from play opportunities by providers of play, and 92% of parents surveyed felt their child did not have the same opportunities to play as their non-disabled peers.

What Challengers does instead starts with the family. “When a family comes to Challengers, we work with them to fully understand their child’s needs and what support will enable them to be happy and safe in our care. If including the child means our staff need to undertake new training, or purchase new supportive equipment, then that’s exactly what we do.”

Non-exclusion matters, she says, “because it is sadly an all-too familiar experience for many disabled children and their families. I’ve lost count of how many times a parent has told me that Challengers is the only place willing and able to include their child.” The families have also said what the welcome is worth, in percentages and in one invitation.

What the Families Report

Gen sees the impact of the work “most clearly in feedback from our families.” In the charity’s most recent parent carer survey of its Short Breaks families, 90% reported increased independence for their disabled children, 89% increased confidence, and 88% said Challengers reduces isolation and loneliness. The effect reaches the rest of the household: 88% reported improved mental health for themselves and their other children.

Short Breaks is one strand. Challengers’ Alternative Provision supports disabled children aged 5 to 19 who have been excluded from education or for whom a suitable school placement can’t be found. Its community Hub offers wider family support, from Family Fun Days and after-school clubs to one-to-one support and Healthy Parent Carer workshops. “For these groups, opportunities to connect really matter,” Gen says. 93% of parent carers say Challengers improves their wellbeing, and 89% agreed their family is less isolated and lonely as a result of using its services.

One number she gives is an age. “A parent recently told me that being invited for a play date was something they never saw in their disabled son’s childhood,” she says. Then, through the Challengers community, at 13 he was invited to a friend’s house. “These are the every day things non disabled families take for granted,” she says, and for families with disabled children “they have such a profound impact.” She came to the play floor from a long way inside the sector, and that is where the next part of her story sits.

From Business in the Community to Team Orange

Gen has been Chief Executive Officer of Challengers since February 2022. The staff call themselves Team Orange, “a name we call ourselves due to our bright orange branding.” Before that, she says, “I spent many years working across the charity sector, both as a campaigner for Business in the Community, founded by HM King Charles III and latterly in national operations” of a science, technology, engineering and maths education charity.

Her profile gives the shape of those years. At Business in the Community, from 2005 to 2013, she went from London Cares Manager to National Operations Manager, Acting Director of Employee Volunteering, and then Director of Programmes and Employee Volunteering, where she led how the organisation supported and challenged its member businesses to engage in the community, and was lead executive for an employee volunteering leadership team with board-level business representation. At EDT (The Engineering Development Trust), a charity encouraging young people into STEM careers, she was South East Regional Director from 2013 and then Chief Operating Officer from 2016 to 2022, responsible for its main operations across the regional structure, business development, scheme quality, the ICT programme, training and impact assessment.

What running one frontline charity has taught her that national roles didn’t is proximity. Every time she hears a parent speak, she says, it reinforces how important it is to listen to what children and families need, and to advocate on their behalf wherever the charity can.

“Running a frontline organisation like Challengers means we see first-hand how decisions about funding and policy actually impact on families. They can determine whether a disabled child has somewhere to go have fun and be included, whether a young person out of school has somewhere safe to go, whether a parent carer gets a meaningful break, and whether an isolated family finds a community that understands them.”

Gen, Chief Executive Officer, Challengers

Challengers has been doing the work since 1979. Asked for one person who shaped how she works, Gen names its founder, Colin Hassell, “who emigrated to Australia in the 1980’s and who keeps in touch.” Asked for a hard moment, she doesn’t pick one: “Every moment when you realise the need for your services outweighs the funding available.”

Where Gen Is Now

Challengers is working to a five-year strategy. “We have some ambitious plans to increase the impact we can have on our community,” Gen says, “but ultimately our charitable vision is very clear: a world where all children and young people can play together freely. In this version of a world our services wouldn’t be needed and we would happily close our doors, however despite the charity working tirelessly since 1979 and the existence of anti-discrimination and accessibility laws, our society still routinely excludes disabled people, and our services are more in-demand than ever.”

Her ask is addressed to a particular reader: “people who can help us close the gap between our ambitions and reality,” which she defines as “funders, donors and businesses who want to make a tangible difference to disabled children and their families.” The gap has a figure on it, the 600 families waiting.

The work follows her out of the building. “Once you build an inclusive playground you can’t help but view every other playground you see out and about under that lens.” Outside work she enjoys time with her wife, their two dogs, Atlas and Khaos, their grown-up kids and their grandson, and has “developed a middle life love of camping.”

Asked for one line under her own name, she keeps it to three words: “passionate about equity.” It is the line her LinkedIn profile has carried beside her title all along.

What’s next, in her words: “To continue our life-changing work, reaching more disabled children and families, challenging the barriers that exclude them, and continuing to build our community of support.”

Beneath the strategy and the survey figures is the point she wants kept whatever else is cut. Inclusion, she says, “isn’t something which is optional.” It is “a fundamental human right.”

Five Lines from Gen’s Diary

“Transforming lives through the power of play.”

“We shouldn’t mistake a funding challenge for a lack of demand.”

“The question we need to ask isn’t whether the demand exists. It very clearly does.”

“Play is the foundation of so much.”

“Every moment when you realise the need for your services outweighs the funding available.”