Family Support appeal
At The Children's Trust, we welcome parents to stay during their child's rehabilitation. We understand that children with an acquired brain injury often make a faster and more complete recovery when they are supported by their family.
So we want to continue to improve the support we offer to families in their time of need. And a gift of £15 today could help make a difference.
When 14-year-old Alby came to the Trust for rehabilitation following a road accident in May last year, it was important for his mum, Lisa, to stay with him. Lisa said, "The Trust is over 2 hours away from our home. I wanted to be at Alby's side the whole time. What if he needed me and I wasn't there? The Trust understands that families need to be close to their children, but there is limited accommodation on site. I was found a room in the nurses' home and I was just grateful to be near Alby."
Thankfully, in April we opened our new rehabilitation centre and we're now able to offer a limited number of bedrooms within the centre to parents, and we have plans to create more parent accommodation over the next year.
But we don't want to stop there. The Trust wants to be able to offer a complete service for the whole family, something we can only achieve with your help.
This complete service will include educational services to enable families to understand all about acquired brain injury and the injury their child has sustained, with access to specialists and therapists, which may take many hours.
We will also recruit new staff: a Consultant Clinical Psychologist, an Educational Psychologist and a Family Therapist - something Lisa has said her whole family would have benefited from.
These new staff will be complemented by our Social Workers, who are already fully funded by voluntary donations.
Then there will be the special extras, like providing every day essentials for a parent's room when they first arrive at the Trust, and providing complimentary lunches during their first week whilst they're settling in. Along with these special extras, we'll offer a volunteer bus service to Asda once a week and more impromptu support for siblings as well as growing our 'family day', a chance for siblings and parents alike to get together and share experiences.
This vital family support will be entirely funded by voluntary donations to The Children's Trust and will cost approximately £250,000 a year.
When a child has an accident or illness that causes an acquired brain injury, it turns their family life upside down. And we know helping families helps them to help their child. That's why we want to make life for the whole family as easy as it can be, with as much support as we can.
We have a clear vision of our future family support, but it's only with your donations that we will be able to achieve our goals and give families the practical and emotional support they need to adjust to life with a child with an acquired brain injury.
Lisa asks "Please make a £15 donation, or whatever you can afford, today so The Children's Trust can help more families like ours. Your donation will help provide the special extras that make all the difference. Thank you."