The Daycare Trust and the Family and Parenting Institute (FPI) are to merge from 1 January after the boards of both charities gave the green light yesterday.

Anand Shukla, currently CEO of the Daycare Trust, will become chief executive of the new organisation. Dr Katherine Rake, CEO of the FPI, is leaving anyway to take up a new post as the first director of Healthwatch England.

The charities opened merger discussions in the summer.
The Daycare Trust, which had income of £1.2m in the year to March 2011 and has not yet published its 2012 accounts online, is an advocacy charity that represents parents and carers in campaigns on childcare issues.

The FPI was until recently a much bigger organisation, with income of £8.5m in the year to March 2011, working to champion families and campaign for a family-friendly society.  Most recently a major campaign has been on the commercialisation and sexualisation of childhood.

However its income fell steeply the following year, to just over £1m.  Most of this was due to the end of the Parenting Fund, a grants programme that the Institute managed on behalf of the then-Department for Children, Schools and Families. Since its inception in 2004 the Parenting Fund has disbursed over £30m in grants to 265 organisations, and enabled projects to reach over 170,000 parents through direct parenting assistance.

Anand Shukla said his priority as CEO of the merged organisation will be to “work with government and employers to ensure that the needs of families, with a particular focus on childcare, are at the heart of their thinking and practice”.

No information was provided about what the new charity will be called.

In June 2011 the Daycare Trust merged with the National Association of Family Information Services.