Fay Greaves is probably best known to readers as one of the stars of the BBC show The Traitors, but away from the small screen she was a National League basketball player and has spent decades working with children.

As an NSPCC Campaigner for Childhood, Fay has worked with the NSPCC to help promote its Child Protection in Sport Unit’s annual campaign, after raising funds for the charity by taking part in a gruelling trek across Machu Picchu with a team of adventurers including Dame Kelly Holmes.

Here she explains why the work of the charity is so important and why she supports the NSPCC.

How did you get involved with the NSPCC?

After The Traitors I was approached to come down to London and meet the charity’s talent team – they knew my background in education and they said I would be fantastic as a campaigner.

(Image: NSPCC)

I spent 30 years working with the most traumatised children in the country. As the head of school welfare, the children who came to me were young people with social emotional mental health issues. Their experiences sadly brought them to our school to get an education because mainstream schools didn’t meet their complex needs due to the trauma they had experienced. It was incredibly challenging.

  • To find out how you can support the NSPCC, either through fundraising, volunteering or taking part in a challenge, visit www.nspcc.org.uk/support-us
  • To find out more about the Child Protection in Sport Unit or Keeping Your Child Safe in Sport, visit thecpsu.org.uk
  • If you are an adult with concerns about a child’s safety or wellbeing, contact the NSPCC Helpline on 0808 8005000 or email help@nspcc.org.uk
  • Children can contact Childline around the clock on 0800 1111 or through the Childline website, www.childline.org.uk

What have you learned in your time supporting the NSPCC?

I visited the NSPCC’s headquarters in London and had a look around and had a brief moment at Childline, and was told the teams take hundreds of calls a day. 

The job they do is amazing but because the NSPCC is one of the biggest charities in the UK, some people think they don’t need to keep donating, because they think the charity doesn’t need the money. But they do, because the cause is huge, and that’s why I decided to take on the Machu Picchu challenge to support the charity.

That’s why the support of partners like Newsquest is so important, not just to help highlight the importance of fundraising, but because it also shares details of the NSPCC’s work across the country to an amazing and wide audience, and help signpost to support and resources available to families everywhere.

Tell us a bit about your time in Machu Picchu…

I thought if I can give six or seven hundred pounds to the charity, that can cover hundreds of contacts to Childline, so it was a really amazing opportunity. Machu Picchu was incredible – a 10-day trek to the Lost City in Peru along the Ancascocha Trail surrounded by snow-capped mountains, raging rivers and reaching summits of 4,550m.

(Image: NSPCC)

It was very gruelling, very hard – we laughed, we cried and we crawled through it. I’ve been involved in sports for 30 years and I’ve done all sorts of training but this was by far the most gruelling thing I’ve done in my life.

  • To find out how you can support the NSPCC, either through fundraising, volunteering or taking part in a challenge, visit www.nspcc.org.uk/support-us
  • To find out more about the Child Protection in Sport Unit or Keeping Your Child Safe in Sport, visit thecpsu.org.uk
  • If you are an adult with concerns about a child’s safety or wellbeing, contact the NSPCC Helpline on 0808 8005000 or email help@nspcc.org.uk
  • Children can contact Childline around the clock on 0800 1111 or through the Childline website, www.childline.org.uk

You spoke at an event for the charity’s Keeping Your Child Safe in Sport campaign, how was that?

In all my time in sport and education, safeguarding has been paramount and that’s why events campaigns like Keeping Your Child Safe in Sport is important. I was really pleased to be part of the day, because it feels like people don’t know enough about what goes on in education and sports settings.

There needs to be more change and education about the NSPCC and what it does, and the public can help and be involved in that. Parents shouldn’t be afraid to ask difficult questions of their child’s club, no matter what level they’re at – they have a duty of care and the child’s wellbeing is the most important thing, so having a little bit of confidence and knowledge to ask questions is paramount.

So what’s next for you?

To continue with supporting my charities and there are a few irons in the fire for next year involving education… watch this space!