C L A R E S C H E R E R
Royal Navy & Royal Marines
Children’s Fund
I moved into charity work when I
was asked by a friend to help set up a county branch of a bereavement
charity.
I have found that working to make a real difference in someone’s life is incredibly fulfilling. I feel that I have come
full circle from my Mayfield days, when we would visit local
elderly people
through the St Vincent de Paul Society, and then take people with disabilities to Lourdes ‐ which I did for six summers. I have been working for the Royal Navy & Royal Marines Children’s Fund for nine years. Having worked for and with many other small to large charities, it has been a joy to work for one where everything seems right. We help children in many different ways, sometimes just putting food on the table and at other times buying extraordinary wheelchairs that are not available on the NHS.
For a tiny team of just four people we manage to pack a lot into our days and getting feedback from the children and seeing the impact of what we do is inspiring. These are children with the same ordinary (if that can be said), disabilities and issues facing other children today but with the added stress of having a parent who is either away for significant periods of time, or facing the very real possibility they will be injured or killed in the line of their work. It is a privilege to help these families in some small way.
Many people do not realise the full extent of the involvement the Royal Navy and the Royal Marines have had in the past ten years or so of conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq.
They imagine that because they are so inextricably linked to the sea they have not been involved on land, whereas in fact they have been heavily committed to every aspect – from being the very first British troops to deploy in Iraq in 2001, to transporting troops, working as medics, providing air support and fighting at the front-line. This is in addition to their global deployment where their military skills are widely used to provide security and contribute to the Government’s significant commitment to aid and development overseas. Whether conducting combat operations in Afghanistan, counter-narcotic patrols in the Caribbean, disrupting piracy in the Gulf of Aden or providing humanitarian aid when a disaster strikes, the Royal Navy continues to police the use of the sea in partnership with allies, and retains the unique ability to influence events at sea, on land, and in the air.
ALL THE FAMILIES WE ASSIST ARE STRUGGLING
FINANCIALLY AND MANY HAVE BEEN TIPPED INTO DESPERATE CIRCUMSTANCES THROUGH
There is so much well-deserved public debate and attention given to our serving and ex-serving Armed Forces personnel that we can often forget about the families and children back home. For the children and families of the Royal Navy and Royal Marines in particular, they spend long periods of time coping as their serving parent is away, sometimes for months on end, often in a conflict zone, and peace of mind can be hard to come by.
BEREAVEMENT, INJURY, ILLNESS OR DISABILITY.
food on the table or a grant when a crisis hits a family that is already struggling.
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The Royal Navy and Royal Marines Children’s Fund has been dedicated to supporting these children for over 100 years through two World Wars and the Falklands, as well as recent conflicts, and have been helping these Service children as they experience the ongoing repercussions of injury or PTSD. Providing help to around 2,000 children every year, we are there for those challenges that they have to deal with over and above those usually faced by their peers. With around 85% of the children we help, either having a disability or illness themselves, or having a parent with one of these, they also have the extra stress linked to being a ‘forces’ child.
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We originally started as orphanages, back in 1825 and 1902, and these merged in 1999 to form the Children’s Fund. In 2015 we changed from a registered charity to a Charitable Incorporated Organisation. The money raised from the sale of the orphanages was invested and the income from this pays for all our running, administrative and fundraising costs which means that 100% of any donations and grants we receive is directly spent on our beneficiaries. We spend around £1.3 million a year on grants to around 2000 children annually, with the average grant per child being around £750.
The Old Cornelian SUMMER 2017
The main challenges that our children face revolve around the stresses and strains on them from long periods with a parent away; the impact of living in a temporary one-parent or no parent family, in addition to the difficulties they are facing if there is disability or illness to contend with. We can provide support in many different ways. In the main we give grants to provide equipment or services linked to their disability or illness, but we can provide help in such basic ways as putting
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