R O Y A L N A V Y A N D R O Y A L M A R I N E S
Our Emergency Essentials Grant helps those children who are living in desperate situations and where poverty is having an effect on their health and development. All the families we assist are struggling financially and many have been tipped into desperate circumstances through bereavement, injury, illness or disability.
We have our own caseworkers based at our offices in Portsmouth and we also use a large network of volunteer case-workers through SSAFA (The Armed Forces Charity). We are just one of many charities that can provide help, and we often work in partnership with other charities so that the children can receive a package of care.
One of our great strengths is that we can respond very quickly to need. We are a small organisation but with a wealth of experience and knowledge behind us. The Director, Monique Bateman MBE, has been running the Children’s Fund for over 34 years and our Welfare Committee is made up of Trustees who have backgrounds in both the Navy and the Marines, Medicine, Law and Education. They meet monthly (and entirely voluntarily) to look at the cases and work out the best way to support the children. The grants we provide range from equipment and clothing to providing wheelchairs or other equipment to make the life of a disabled child easier, and that of the parent caring. If you have a disabled child and are effectively coping on your own for long periods of time, such basic things such as a swivelling car seat to help put the child in and out of the car can make a huge difference to your life.
Lifting a disabled child, particularly one in their teens, can be incredibly difficult for one person alone. Many of our families have to make frequent hospital visits and stays and this can be expensive both travelling and finding accommodation if far from home.
Assessments of special needs so that the child can receive the right support at school are complicated when you have to move frequently and therefore change school. We support a number of children whose personal circumstances mean they are in a better environment if they are at a boarding school suited to their needs.
A large proportion of our support falls into what we call our Emergency Essentials Grant scheme. For some children and young people their need is immediate and we need to respond quickly and directly to the family. This could be for a bed, clean clothes or a hot meal.
We are also committed to highlighting the issues that our children face. To do this we seek specific funding for the project either from individual donors, grants and, most recently, from the Armed Forces Covenant LIBOR fund so that the money for the project does not come out of our charitable funds. In 2009, we produced a book ‘The Overlooked Casualties of Conflict’ that looked at the main challenges faced by Service Children. Widely read and praised it is still available for download on our website. The book generated a lot of interest including two early-bird motions in the House of Commons and precipitated Ofsted to look at and change their guidelines to schools for children of the Armed Services.
In 2014 we brought out ‘Knit the Family’ a book for families to help them understand what has, and may still be happening, in the lives of service personnel both pre and post deployment and issues around PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), with guidance on how to cope and where to get help. This is available free of charge as a printed book and is also downloadable on our website. It is being widely used by individual families and also by welfare officers around the UK who give it out to families, particularly around deployment times.
The Children’s Fund remain dedicated to supporting the many children and young people that need our help. We help any child from 0 to 25 years of age who has a parent that serves or has served in either the Royal Navy or Royal Marines. To find out more about how we help or how you can support us, then visit our website
www.rnrmchildrensfund.org.uk
‘Children of serving personnel are so much more than just picture opportunities snapped up when their loved ones return from overseas…….’ Monique Bateman MBE, Director of the Children’s Fund
www.rnrmchildrensfund.org.uk rnchildren@btconnect.com 023 9263 9534
OC
Clare Scherer Class of 1981
Missing OCs This year we have been asked in particular if anyone has any contact details for:
Jane Tasker (1961) Sharon Courtney (1978) Paz Calzado (1992) Judith Johnson (1962) Shan Powell (1960) Ulrica McDougall‐Morrison (1960) Christine Carr (1976) Felicity Downey (1976)
The Old Cornelian SUMMER 2017
Sarah Fitzgerald (1976) Annabel Hall (1976) Elizabeth Hardcastle (1976) Trudy Hunt (1976) Christina Lee (1976) Amanda Mott (1976) Susan Price (1976) Lisetta Pulsford (1976)
Jane Rutherford (1976) Jane Severne (1976) May Siu (1976) Sandra Vallejo (1976) Maria‐Teresa Valasco (1976) Julia Watson (1976) Julia Wilmot (1976)
21
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64
