CONTENTS:
Julie's
Update
Farewell Hazel
Birth Mothers'
Group
Young
People's Update
JULIE'S
UPDATE
I hope you have
all had a good summer, despite the not so favourable weather.
We have had a
busy few months with the volume of work growing along with our costs
but with our income declining. We are finally having a reality check
and despite our best efforts we can no longer subsidise our services
to the extent we have been able to in the past which has been due to
the kind and generous donations and grants we have received from a
variety of sources.
Our contracted
income for this year has remained the same as for the previous year
with no inflationary uplift and income from fundraising has reduced.
This has brought about an almost impossible task of continuing to
maintain and actually increase our level of service provision with
less money to do it.
As an
organisation we have been fortunate that various local organisations
are taking us up as their charity of the year and they are working
hard to raise as much as possible for us. We raised awareness of the
need for adoption support during National Adoption Week by holding
an open day on Thursday 13th November at our offices. This gave us
an opportunity to promote our work and also raise some money from
selling drinks, cakes and tombola tickets.
In these
difficult financial times provision of services such as ours along
with others in the Third Sector will inevitably be negatively
affected as their income dwindles. As a team we are constantly
striving to be prudent with our expenditure but there is only so
much we can do before it affects our service users. Many who receive
our newsletter or visit our website will have hopefully benefited
from and enjoyed a basically free service which has been open ended,
allowing you to access support and help at any time, even after
several years. In the future it is unlikely we will be able to
continue to do this without an improvement in our voluntary income.
I know everyone
has many financial commitments but every fundraising event which
raises £100 will allow us to subsidise 3 hours of counselling,
support a child to attend one of our camps or assist someone with
their research costs where there is genuine hardship. Why not hold a
coffee morning, bring and buy sale, quiz night? I am sure there are
many of you out there with novel ideas of fundraising – just look at
Children in Need!! We are always happy to come and attend
fundraising events or to speak at groups and clubs so if you need a
speaker please contact us.
An alternative
way to support us is to donate to us via this very website. If you
would like to do this, please go to the homepage and click on the
donate button - it's really easy and you can either donate a one-off
amount or make a regular monthly donation!
Despite the
doom and gloom perpetrated in the press we still remain optimistic
about the future of Adoption Support and plan to continue to provide
the quality and accessible services our users have come to expect.
We wish you all a happy Christmas and a peaceful New Year.
Julie
McBride
Registered Manager
