Providing Community Support and Social Inclusion for Disabled Children and Young People
Previous reports: 2005/6 | 2004/5
What we do
Hackney Family Backup provides community based support services to families who have children with a disability or a disabling medical condition.
Our main activities
Short break care
We provide short break care by recruiting, assessing and approving carers from the diverse local
communities in Hackney. Our professional staff, working under the Fostering Services Regulations 2002,
assess, support, train and encourage the development of carers ensuring that care is high quality
and accessible to children with a range of backgrounds and needs. Our carers work hard to offer
children and young people opportunities to enjoy fun, enriching experiences which support their
development and inclusion in the local community.
During the year, flexible short break care services were provided to 27 children and young people.
This year, Hackney Family Backup had its fourth successful inspection by the Commission for Social
Care Inspection. The report noted the invaluable services and support HFBU provides to children and
families, and highlighted the child-focussed way we work.
Homesitting
Some families prefer their children to be cared for in their own home and for some children, whose homes have been specially adapted to accommodate their needs, homesitting is the best option. Approved 'sitters' work from the family home but usually work with families to enable the children to access play and other fun activities in the community. Our homesitting service provided support for seven families and fifteen children during the year.
Family Support
Our Family Support Service, operated in partnership with Hackney Children's Fund and Hackney Children's Service, continues to develop. Volunteers work alongside families to provide practical support and enable them to access local resources. In all thirty-nine families and eighty-three children received support, information and advice this year.
Parenting Support
This year with funding from the Parenting Fund and a number of charitable trusts we have set up a
support service for families of disabled children with challenging behaviour. As well as individual
support on a wide range of practical issues families can come along to a monthly Family Club. While
the children and their siblings enjoy some really great activities run by trained playworkers, their
parents meet to relax and offer mutual support and advice facilitated by project staff. The project
began in September 2006 and by March 2007 eighteen families, including twenty-five children, had
benefitted from this service.
The Toy Library
The toy library helps to increase the play opportunities available to local disabled children who find it difficult to access mainstream play resources. During the year we raised funds for some exciting new toys and towards employing a worker to develop the library, taking toys out to families who find it hard to access and supporting parents with
ideas for developing play with their disabled children. The fundraising was not completed during the year and the
appointment will be made later in 2007.
Celebrating our talented youngsters
To coincide with our Annual General Meeting this year we held a creativity competition asking our children to write a poem or draw something on the topic of their name. Though there were lots of great entries the runaway winner was Sean Hoffman with this amazing poem:
My name is SEAN
What you see is what you get.
My name is Irish
It means John in English
came from the Bible,
from a Disciple.
It is winter
the wind cut you
like a splinter.
The leaves smile
then curl up and die
then fly off into the sky
All the colours you can describe
It like me
Pop out like a weed
and turn into a tree.
My feelings blowing about in the breeze.
...and a great volunteer
Heather Dawes is one of our most reliable, committed and talented volunteers so we nominated her for Hackney Voluntary Action's annual volunteer achievement awards. We were delighted when she came runner up in the Volunteer of the Year Award. The ceremony was held at UBS in the City and awards were presented by the Speaker of Hackney.
"I value the time I have to myself when the volunteer comes. I don't know what I would do without the support"
Parent, February 2007
"Backup is doing a good job here. I have been able to go to places I never dreamed I could because there is an extra pair of hands"
Parent, February 2007
Despite threatening weather we held a very successful picnic in Springfield Park in August. Under grey skies and wrapped up against the chill wind over seventy children and adults played and enjoyed spicy chicken, homemade pizza and jolloff rice. We were joined by staff of FACT who brought along their multi-sensory van so everyone could join in the fun. Multi sensory van? A stunned passer by described it well: "Wow, a mobile night club!"
The van also came along to the February party where children enjoyed face painting, indoor football, and computer games and were entertained by Potty Patrick the clown, joined by Christian Pochettino, an HFBU Homesitter and talented guitarist.
Parents were able to enjoy a little papering and were asked to participate in a formal evaluation of our services from which the quotes are taken.
Hackney Families TogetherAlong with staff from the Primary Care Trust, Hackney Children's Services, the Learning Trust, Parent Partnership, the Key and the City and Hackney Carers Centre we have been key players in developing the Hackney wide consultation group for parents of disabled children. The group, now known as Hackney Families Together, has made its views known on play provision, social care, housing and education in the Borough. The group enjoyed a fantastic end of summer term party held at the Energie Gym. As well as trying out the gym equipment parents replaced the calories with a slap up lunch, had some fun with an African dance session, and were pampered with a range of therapies and manicures.
Hackney Families Together will have a say in the planning of the new Centre for Integrated Disabled Children's Services due to open in 2008.
Staff
The staff team was unchanged during the year and was:
Sheila Ramdular: Director
Christine Addison: Deputy Director
Gillian Goodchild: Homesitting and Volunteer coordinator
Emma Hutton: Family Support Coordinator
Adijat Bolaji: Administrative Worker
Deborah Walsh: Office Manager
Elizabeth Narasimha: Family Placement Social Worker
The Council of Management
We are lucky to have a strong, effective and hard working Council of Management. They exercise their role of governing the organisation appropriately and bring a good range of skills to the task.
The Council of Management during the year 2006/2007 was:
Ben Corrigan - Chair
Christoph Hobo - Treasurer
Phil Evans - Company Secretary & Vice Chair
Vicky Ndunagum
Sue Windross
Diane Hughes
Looking forwardWe intend to use the money raised this year to appoint a worker who will develop our specialist toy and resource library. We would like to further support play for disabled children by linking playworkers to families whose children find it hard to access mainstream play activities for whatever reason.
We want to be able to provide training for families of disabled children with challenging behaviour in response to needs identified by parents attending the Family Club.
We continue to have far more referrals for our core services than we have capacity to meet. So we will still be looking at ways of attracting more enthusiastic, skilled people to provide safe but exciting opportunities for children while giving their parents a short break. The challenge for the future is to grow our services while retaining the warm personal relationship and high quality care which are what families value so much about HFBU.
In 2006/7 Hackney Family Backup received funding from:
The London Borough of Hackney
Hackney Children's Fund
The Parenting Fund
The Three Guineas Trust
The Charles S French Charitable Trust
The Hale Trust
The Mr and Mrs J A Pye Charitable Settlement
The David Solomons Charitable Trust
The Good Neighbours Trust
The Goldsmiths Company Charity
The Drapers Charitable Fund
The Mercers Charitable Foundation
The Tallow Chandlers Benevolent Fund
HFBU never make direct appeals to the public for funding. If you receive an e-mail requesting
financial assistance that you think might be from us please contact us immediately.