The Big Give 2025
We interviewed Gemma to reflect on her time as CEO, the next chapter of The Green House, and why our first ever Big Give match funding appeal launching 2nd-9th December 2025 is the perfect way to mark our impact!
December 2025 is sadly Gemma’s last month as CEO of The Green House. We recently welcomed our interim CEO Susie Hay, and will announce Gemma’s permanent replacement when the post is filled.
Hi Gemma (and Zeb!) Can you tell us a little bit about The Big Give?
Hello! So this year, for the very first time, The Green House is launching a Big Give appeal. What this means is that from the 2nd to the 9th of December 2025, all donations to The Green House via our Big Give campaign page will effectively be doubled by the Big Give. This is so critical to enabling The Green House to continue its work in supporting children and young people and families who have experienced sexual abuse in our area to heal. I am so grateful to all of our incredible supporters because it means that next year and every year forward, young people will always find hope and healing at our door.
Why are donations to critical to the work that The Green House does?
Over the last three years, we’ve redesigned The Green House to make sure that children and young people and families are at the very centre of their own care. We’ve expanded our services in a really big way to make sure that we can address high demand. But in 2025 we’ve seen a massive increase in referrals, and currently our waiting lists are growing, particularly across the therapy service, across our family support service, and also across our nature-based therapy service. Donations are absolutely critical to making sure that next year we can deliver more of these things so that children have less time to wait for care.
How does The Green House support children, young people, and families?
When I think about how The Green House supports children, young people, and families, I always come back to our values. And the most important ones for me are hope and choice, because the experience of child sexual abuse can be so dark and so scary and so overwhelming, and very often we’re here all on our own. So as a team, our role is to hold onto hope for children and young people while they heal in their darkest hours, and enable them to make choices that can support them with their life ahead. To connect with other young people and families who’ve had similar experiences, because that is how we heal – together.
What would happen without The Green House?
Every year an estimated 13,000 children under the age of 16 will experience child sexual abuse living in Bristol, and The Green House is the only specialist provider of whole family support in this area. We also know that the majority of children and young people will never come forward to access support, and when they do, the most important factors in promoting healing are choice and readiness. Without The Green House, we will find that fewer young people have a place to come to access this support. So your donation is absolutely critical in making sure that we can find more young people and enable them to make a choice about their own journey that is right for them.
What are you most proud of at The Green House in 2025?
It is actually really hard for me to choose one thing that I’m proud of that The Green House has achieved this year because I feel that there has been so much. But when I look back at where we’ve come in the last three years, I’m really proud of our service redesign. Three years ago, we were a creative arts therapy service doing beautiful work. We could see about a hundred children and young people a year for therapy only. And over the last three years, we’ve worked with young people and families and our practitioners and the evidence base to create a new whole family support service, which this year has enabled us to reach record breaking numbers of families, practitioners, and professionals nationally. I’m so proud of my team. I’m so proud of our research, but most of all, I am so proud of our young people and families who have helped us get to where we are today.
What’s next for The Green House?
Oh, gosh. Many beautiful things! We hope so much to be able to expand our nature-based therapy groups and develop an individual offer for children and young people in these spaces, because they are in such high demand. We also hope that we can evaluate that service so that up and down the country, other services like us can learn to build nature-based therapy services in a way that’s right for children and young people. The Green House’s new whole family support model is being evaluated by Coventry University, and we hope so much to be able to launch that in a really big way to promote learning across the sector. We hope to be able to expand our therapy services and our family support work services, and most importantly, take a national stage in our Voice work, supporting children and young people into national change making roles alongside our annual Festival of Activism.