Support for charities.
We have a long and proud history of supporting charities.
Simon Community
Our London Charity
The Simon Community has been working since 1963 to alleviate the isolation of people sleeping rough, provide a place where they can gain a sense of belonging and foster the skills they need to move towards independent living. The work they do is carried out by volunteers and residents living and working together as a community. Live in volunteers stay at the Simon Community house with residents, sharing their mutual strengths and weaknesses and creating a unique atmosphere. This is not easy to sustain, but for many of their residents it may be the first time in their lives that they have been respected and have somewhere they can belong.
Their street work outreach is a fundamental part of the work they do. It is often the first contact they have with people who are sleeping rough in London. Their outreach work keeps them in touch with the latest news on the streets and helps them to monitor how many people are sleeping rough at different times throughout the year.
We Hear You
Our Bath Charity
We Hear You provide free emotional support for patients, families, friends and carers who have been affected or bereaved by cancer or any other life-threatening condition, across Somerset, Bath and North East Somerset. We Hear You understands that the emotional impact can be just as hard to manage as physical symptoms, and that the impact extends to everyone connected to the person diagnosed. People who use their service often report feeling numb, isolated and terrified and struggling to cope. We Hear You provide a safe space to work through difficult feelings with an experienced, specialist counsellor.
In 1993, Jill Miller was diagnosed with breast cancer. Her experience of the lack of emotional support available to people going through cancer, particularly those who couldn’t afford to pay, left her determined to make a difference. The following year, she installed a second phone line in her home to offer support to women suffering from breast cancer and launched Positive Action on Cancer (PAC). PAC became We Hear You (WHY) in 2016 and now provides 115 counselling sessions each week for children, young people and adults affected by cancer or any life-threatening condition.
SSNAP
Our Oxford Charity
Supporting Sick Newborns and Parents (SSNAP) was founded in 1982 by Cessa Moore MBE and has supported the Newborn Care Unit at the John Radcliffe Hospital since then. Formed initially by a group of parents, who wanted to support other parents with premature and sick babies, SSNAP has continued this ethos to the present day – with family support at the centre of all the work they do. The Newborn Care Unit can now care for up to 56 babies at any one time and is a Level 3 Centre, meaning that the most sick and premature babies from across the Thames Valley, and often further afield, are looked after here in Oxford.
When newborn babies need specialist, often lifesaving, medical care at birth, it can be a traumatic and difficult time for parents and families. SSNAP are there to support parents, provide funding for specialist support and medical equipment, as well as fund life changing research.
Lucy Crawford, Our Oxford Charity Committee Rep, says:
“SSNAP are a great local charity that supports families and very poorly babies in the Neonatal Unit in the John Radcliffe Hospital. I am really looking forward to understanding more about the research, equipment and training they fund as well as the practical advice for some of the most vulnerable and in need families. SSNAP get very little in the way of funding so the majority comes from individual fundraising, they are completely overwhelmed with pride to have been chosen by our staff as our next charity partnership and can’t wait to meet you all!”
Rainbow Trust
Our Swindon Charity
For 37 years, Rainbow Trust Children’s Charity have been supporting families who have a child aged 0-18 years with a life-threatening or terminal illness. When a child has a serious illness, family life is turned upside down and time becomes more precious than ever. Rainbow Trust pairs each family with an expert Family Support Worker who enables them to make the most of their time together, giving them practical and emotional support, whenever they need it, for as long as is needed.
Rainbow Trust supports the whole family, including parents, carers, the unwell child, brothers, sisters, and grandparents. Support is hugely varied and depends on the needs of the family.
It can include:
- listening to a family’s fears and anxieties
- helping to explain illnesses, diagnoses, and treatments
- keeping a seriously ill child company during hospital stays
- driving families to medical appointments to help save time and money
- organising fun activities to help sick children, their brothers, and sisters
- support through bereavement and grief.
Elodie Pinn, Corporate Partnerships Fundraiser from Rainbow Trust Children’s charity, says:
“RWK Goodman’s support would be particularly valuable during these challenging times where families caring for a child with a life-threatening condition are being disproportionately affected by the cost-of-living crisis. Families are having to choose between paying electricity bills to keep life-saving medical equipment running for their seriously ill child, putting food on the table, and paying for fuel to take their child to vital medical appointments.”