Upton Village WI Newsletter...

WHY SAVE the FAMILY ?

Jenny, Louise, Debbie and Jane paid a visit to Save the Family in Plas Bellin Hall to check it out as a potential Upton Village WI nominated Charity for 2010.

This place oozes good stuff. Angella launched the tour and then Joan took us into orbit around the houses, playground and umpteen facilities. What an incredibly dedicated and convincing lady she is. She has been here for ages and knew all the answers from who donated this and that, to what happens if the guests misbehave. You wouldn’t want to cross her! Plas Bellin is a well designed, organised, clean and practical answer to a complicated problem.

What do they do?

They take families who are on the precipice of complete disaster and they help them.  They are starting from scratch and teaching young families the very basics, what most of us had shown to us by our Mum and Dad.

We’ve all the heardabout the best way to help a starving man; with a fishing rod rather than a fish.  These families need both, they also need help with how to use the rod and what to do with the fish if they catch one.

It’s Harvest Festival time and we went into their enormous ‘pantry’ which was full to bursting with donations from the local schools.  Great to see where some of those food parcels end up.

Stats? They help 50 families each month, that costs £1.2m a year Funding comes from 3 main sources. Two thirds from Central and Local Government and one third from fund raising (folk like us).

That’s £400k, but this is a very popular charity and they have got some seriously dedicated and convincing people working to keep this money rolling in.

Success?  81% of their families end up backon track, not bad considering they started at the end of the road.

Although seemingly expensive, this is cheaper than the alternative; care for the children and homelessness for the parents.  It’s hard to put a price on a family.

We went into one of the houses where there was a young Mum with her two children, safe and warm their bed.  Despite the nightmare which was her life, this young woman was smiling and positive about being at Plas Bellin.  I could see the hope in her eyes.  Her house was tidier than mine and there were home made cakes on the kitchen top.  One can only begin to imagine the difference this place has had on her life, or what might have happened to her if they weren’t there.

What can we do?

Apart from cold hard cash, which is always useful, we could get involved with helping here in a number of practical ways.  We were all inspired by the visit and started dreaming up ideas of what we could do.  With the pool of talent and kindness at the UVWI we could definitely make a difference here.

If you would like to know more about Save the Family - visit their website:- www.savethefamily.uk.com 

If you have a news item or announcement - please email jane-mann@hotmail.co.uk.

We are interested in what's happening - anything from new arrivals, events of any kind, discoveries - even favourite recipes!  Email me and let's keep up to date.