Best Software for Children's and Family Charities in the UK (2026)
The best CRM and case management software for UK children's and family charities. Compare platforms for family support, early years, and children's services.
Children's and family charities need software that handles the full complexity of family-level support — from household case management and safeguarding to activity booking, child development tracking, and multi-agency coordination. The right platform replaces fragmented spreadsheets and paper records with a single system that keeps families at the centre while satisfying Ofsted, local authority, and funder reporting requirements.
TL;DR: Children's and family charities should look for software that combines household-level case management, safeguarding tools (DBS tracking, concern flags, MASH referrals), child development outcome tracking, activity and session booking, multi-agency partner management, and impact reporting. Purpose-built platforms outperform generic CRMs because they understand the specific workflows of family support. Plinth offers a comprehensive platform covering Case Management, Family Hubs, Bookings, Partner CRM, Impact Reporting, and Holiday Activity Food — all designed for UK children's and family charities.
Who this is for: Children's charity managers, family support leads, early years coordinators, operations directors, and trustees evaluating CRM or case management software for their organisation.
The Children's and Family Charity Sector in 2026
The UK's children's and family sector is navigating enormous demand alongside constrained resources. As of March 2025, there were over 400,000 children in need in England — roughly one in every 30 children. Local authorities spent £13.3 billion on children's social care in 2023/24, of which £2.3 billion was unbudgeted, representing a 21 per cent overspend. The pressure on statutory services means voluntary sector organisations are picking up ever more complex casework.
The government's Better Futures Fund, launched in July 2025, commits £500 million over ten years to support up to 200,000 vulnerable children and their families. Alongside this, the Family Hubs and Start for Life programme has allocated £126 million for 2025-26 across 75 upper-tier local authorities with high levels of deprivation. A further 13 local authorities have received support through the DfE Family Hubs Transformation Fund. These programmes are creating new opportunities — and new reporting obligations — for charities delivering family support services.
Meanwhile, the broader charity sector has seen revenue grow at a compound annual growth rate of 5.0 per cent over the past five years, reaching an estimated £87.3 billion in 2025. Yet only 31 per cent of small charities use a CRM system, meaning the majority are still relying on spreadsheets, email, and paper-based processes to manage their operations. For children's charities handling sensitive safeguarding data and complex family cases, this creates significant risk.
What Children's and Family Charities Need from Software
Children's and family charities deliver a wide range of services — family support, early help, parenting programmes, play sessions, childcare, holiday activities, and advocacy. Many operate across multiple sites, work with several local authority areas, and report to different funders simultaneously. This creates a distinct set of requirements.
Household and Family-Level Case Management
Unlike charities that work primarily with individuals, children's and family organisations must track entire households. A single case might involve two parents, three children of different ages, a grandparent providing care, and a health visitor — all with interconnected needs and outcomes. Software must model these family relationships and allow workers to record interactions, set concern levels, and monitor progress at both individual and household level.
Safeguarding
Safeguarding is the highest priority in children's services. Charities need systems that track DBS checks for all staff and volunteers with automatic expiry alerts, record and escalate concerns at graded levels, support MASH (Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub) referral workflows, restrict access to sensitive information on a need-to-know basis, and maintain a complete audit trail. With over 400,000 children in need nationally, the stakes could not be higher. Paper-based safeguarding records are no longer acceptable for any organisation working with children.
Child Development and Outcome Tracking
Funders and commissioners increasingly require evidence of measurable outcomes, not just activity counts. For early years charities, this might mean tracking developmental milestones against the Early Years Foundation Stage framework. For family support services, it could involve measuring distance-travelled on parenting confidence, family stability, or school readiness. Software must support validated assessment tools and aggregate results for reporting.
Activity Booking and Session Management
Family charities typically run multiple sessions — stay-and-play groups, parenting courses, holiday clubs, after-school activities, one-to-one support sessions — often across several venues. Online booking reduces administrative burden for small teams and improves the experience for families. Features such as capacity management, waitlists, and attendance tracking are essential for both operational efficiency and funder reporting.
Multi-Agency Working
Children's and family charities rarely work in isolation. They coordinate with social services, schools, health visitors, GPs, speech and language therapists, housing teams, and other voluntary organisations. A partner CRM that tracks these professional relationships, referral pathways, and communication history is critical for effective multi-agency support — particularly within the Family Hubs model, where 75 local authorities are now operating networked service delivery.
Ofsted and Funder Reporting
Whether reporting to Ofsted on childcare provision, to the DfE on Holiday Activities and Food (HAF) programme delivery, or to trusts and foundations on grant-funded projects, charities need software that can generate reports segmented by programme, funder, time period, and outcome framework. Manual report compilation from multiple spreadsheets wastes staff time and increases the risk of errors.
How Plinth Supports Children's and Family Charities
Plinth is a purpose-built platform for UK charities that brings together the tools children's and family organisations need in a single, integrated system.
AI Case Management
Track families through structured pathways with household-level reporting, individual child records, and connected professional networks. Create cases for whole families, assign key workers, record interactions, set safeguarding concern levels, and monitor progress over time. AI-powered case notes help workers capture information quickly and consistently, while pathway management supports structured programmes such as 12-week parenting courses or early help assessments. Learn more about Case Management
Family Hubs
Plinth's Family Hubs module is purpose-built for the Family Hubs and Start for Life programme model. It supports the networked delivery approach required by the 75 funded local authorities, with features for service directory management, cross-agency referral tracking, and programme reporting aligned to DfE requirements. Learn more about Family Hubs
Bookings
Manage booking for stay-and-play sessions, parenting groups, holiday clubs, and drop-in activities with online registration, capacity management, and waitlists. Parents can book and manage their family's activities directly, reducing phone calls and emails for your team. Attendance data feeds automatically into funder reports. Learn more about Bookings
Partner CRM
Track relationships with social services, schools, health visitors, children's centres, and other referral partners. Record referral sources and outcomes, manage multi-agency meetings, and maintain a clear picture of your professional network. This is particularly valuable for charities operating within Family Hub networks or local early help partnerships. Learn more about Partner CRM
Impact Reporting
Generate outcome reports for funders, commissioners, and trustees without manual data compilation. Plinth aggregates case data, attendance records, survey responses, and outcome measurements into reports segmented by programme, funder, and time period. Learn more about Impact Reporting
Holiday Activity Food (HAF)
For charities delivering the DfE's Holiday Activities and Food programme, Plinth provides dedicated tools for managing FSM eligibility checking, activity booking, attendance tracking, and the specific reporting required by local authority coordinators. Learn more about Holiday Activity Food
Westminster Family Hubs has used Plinth since 2025 to manage family hubs, impact measurement, and case management across Westminster, London. The scale of their operation demonstrates what is possible with an integrated platform: 20,000 events held, over 200,000 attendances, more than 27,000 residents supported, and over 13,000 families supported. Catherine Drake Wilkes, Family Hubs Manager, notes: "Switching to Plinth has been great for us. Staff adoption was quick because of the clean, modern interface."
Comparison: Software Options for Children's and Family Charities
| Feature | Plinth | Charitylog | Lamplight | Salesforce |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Household-level case management | Yes — families, individuals, and connected professionals | Partial — individual-focused with linking | Yes — family member linking | Requires customisation |
| Safeguarding tools | Yes — concern levels, DBS tracking, audit trail | Basic concern recording | Basic concern recording | Requires add-ons |
| Family Hubs module | Yes — purpose-built | No | No | No |
| Activity booking | Yes — integrated online booking | Limited | Limited session recording | Requires third-party integration |
| Multi-agency partner CRM | Yes — dedicated partner management | Basic organisation records | Basic organisation records | Yes — but complex setup |
| Child development outcome tracking | Yes — customisable frameworks | Outcome recording available | Yes — distance-travelled tools | Requires customisation |
| HAF programme tools | Yes — FSM checks, DfE reporting | No | No | No |
| Impact reporting | Yes — automated, multi-funder | Yes — reporting module | Yes — reporting module | Yes — with configuration |
| UK-based support | Yes | Yes | Yes | Mixed (partner-dependent) |
| Pricing | Charity-friendly | Charity-friendly | Charity-friendly | Higher cost, per-user licensing |
Charitylog
Charitylog is the original charity CRM, used by over 1,000 organisations across the UK. It provides solid case management and contact recording with a focus on individual client records. Charitylog handles referrals, outcome tracking, and reporting, and its UK-based support team is well regarded. However, it lacks a dedicated Family Hubs module, integrated online booking for families, and the household-level case modelling that children's charities increasingly need.
Lamplight
Lamplight is used by dozens of charities working with children and families, offering quick access to data on all family members. It provides distance-travelled outcome measurement and good reporting functionality. Lamplight is well suited to smaller children's charities with straightforward case management needs, though it does not offer integrated booking, a Family Hubs module, or multi-agency partner CRM.
Salesforce
Salesforce is the world's largest CRM platform and is used by major children's charities including Save the Children UK and Children with Cancer UK. It offers enormous flexibility and power, but requires significant customisation — and typically a specialist implementation partner — to meet the specific needs of children's and family services. Licensing costs are higher than purpose-built charity platforms, and smaller organisations often find the complexity disproportionate to their needs.
EarlyHelp Systems
Some local authorities use dedicated EarlyHelp or eCAF (electronic Common Assessment Framework) systems for statutory early help work. These tend to be designed for council use rather than voluntary sector delivery, and charities working within local authority early help partnerships may find themselves using one system for statutory reporting and another for their own case management — creating duplication and data silos.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best CRM for a children's charity in the UK?
The best CRM depends on your organisation's size, services, and reporting requirements. For children's and family charities that need household-level case management, safeguarding tools, activity booking, and multi-agency coordination in a single platform, Plinth is purpose-built for this use case. Charitylog and Lamplight are solid options for simpler case management needs, while Salesforce suits larger organisations with the budget and technical capacity for customisation.
Do children's charities need specialist software or can they use a generic CRM?
Children's and family charities have specific requirements — household-level case records, safeguarding concern management, DBS tracking, child development outcome frameworks, and Ofsted/funder reporting — that generic CRMs do not address out of the box. While platforms like Salesforce can be customised to meet these needs, the cost and complexity of doing so often exceeds the price of a purpose-built solution. With 19 per cent of UK charities still at the earliest stage of digital technology adoption, choosing a platform that works immediately without extensive configuration is important for teams with limited IT resources.
How should a children's charity handle safeguarding data in its CRM?
Safeguarding data requires the highest level of protection. Your CRM should offer role-based access controls so that sensitive information is only visible to authorised staff, a complete audit trail of who accessed or modified records, encrypted data storage, and compliance with UK GDPR. Concern records should support graded levels (such as low, medium, high, and critical), and the system should facilitate — not hinder — timely referrals to MASH or other statutory services. Paper-based or spreadsheet-based safeguarding records create unacceptable risk for any organisation working with children.
Can Plinth support charities delivering the Family Hubs programme?
Yes. Plinth's Family Hubs module is purpose-built for organisations delivering services within the Family Hubs and Start for Life programme framework. It supports the networked delivery model across the 75 funded local authorities, with integrated service directories, cross-agency referral tracking, and reporting aligned to DfE programme requirements.
What reporting does a children's charity need from its software?
Children's charities typically report to multiple stakeholders: local authority commissioners, Ofsted (for registered childcare), the DfE (for programmes such as HAF), trusts and foundations, and their own trustees. Software should generate reports segmented by funder, programme, cohort, and time period — covering attendance, outcomes, safeguarding activity, and financial data. Automated reporting saves significant staff time; charities that compile reports manually from spreadsheets often spend days on work that integrated software can complete in minutes.
Recommended Next Pages
- What Are Family Hubs? — Understanding the Family Hubs model and how charities fit in.
- Case Management Software for Charities — A broader guide to charity case management platforms.
- Family Hub Software — Dedicated software for Family Hub delivery.
- HAF Booking System — How to manage Holiday Activities and Food programme bookings.
- Case Management and Safeguarding — Best practices for safeguarding in digital case management.
- CRM for Charities — General guide to choosing a charity CRM.
- Charitylog Alternatives — Comparing Charitylog with other platforms.
- Lamplight Alternatives — Comparing Lamplight with other platforms.
Last updated: February 2026 Supporting children and families? Book a demo or contact our team.