On September 25th Alex and lots of other motorbike riders will be involved in the annual beach race. Alex writes on his Just Giving page.
“So as some of you will know already, I have entered Weston Super-Mare Beach Race this year. It’s a world famous, 3-hour race, round a 6 mile course, on the beach, with a mixture of big hills to climb, corners and jumps, with a 2km straight! It is amazing and I am so excited to take part!!
So are we Alex! Good luck with the race, the fund raising and most of all your efforts to see your son!!!
You can donate here LINK
Our charity’s helpline is our main national resource for personal help.
It gets 20,000 calls per year. Salute to Malcolm Lockheed and his helpers. One of whom, you will have seen from the last newsletter, came runner-up as national helpline volunteer of the year. Of all helplines, not just ours.
An enormous amount of work, largely invisible to others. And risking being under appreciated simply because it operates without causing any trouble.
Our helpline IT infrastructure was about to ‘go down’. It was anyway dated. Failed to capture a lot of information that needed to be integrated with other aspects of our work.
Thanks to Paul O’Callaghan, our chair of trustees, and others a new system has been set up. Again, quite a lot of work that risks not being noticed. The direct cost is a whisker under £3,000 but there will be knock on costs in training to use and so on.
Please help with the cost. £10 per head would give us a good surplus Help out here: LINK
A vicious cycle downwards can be turned into a virtuous cycle upwards.
A common reason given for not supporting our charity is that it is ineffective. We punch way above our weight. For example, no-one else suggested that parental responsibility be given to unmarried fathers. The grounds stated for not doing this were that they could not be assumed to have had any more than an earlier momentary involvement. That signature on the birth certificate was a sufficient sign was our idea...and we turned it into law. Many other examples.
Our charity now has a new and vigorous leadership. However, to quote the famous statement of the oil magnate John Paul Getty, the second million dollars is easier than the first $10,000.
We are not yet even at that level.
Help get members and small donations- Currently our only source of income
Estimates – no-one knows -of the number of excluded parents are 1.5m
Estimates (ditto) of the number of children who want to see more of their ‘other parent’ than they are allowed is 2.5m
Ministry of Justice figures for the number of applications for Child Arrangements Orders is 57,000
Our membership is 1,700
Getting more is up to us – nationally, but also YOU. If everyone recruited one more, or by whatever means: social media posts, caused potential members….
What do you think?
Send us feedback!
