Providing Community Support and Social Inclusion for Disabled Children and Young People
What we do
Hackney Family Backup exists to provide 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 enriching experiences which support their
development and inclusion in the local community.
During the year, flexible short break care services were provided to 28 children and young people.
The Council of Management has created a small fund to pay for items of equipment or adaptations
to carers' homes to make them more accessible for disabled children. The fund is to be used only
when it will enable respite care to happen or prevent a link from breaking down.
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 eight families during the year.
Family Support
Our Family Support Service, operated in partnership with The Children's Fund, continues to develop. Volunteers work alongside families to provide practical support and enable them to access local resources. In all twenty six families and sixty eight children received support, information and advice this year.
Funding from Hackney Social Services Quality Protects has enabled us to expand and complement this project to reach families whose children are of ages not within the remit of the Children's Fund. During the year thirteen families and twenty four children benefited from this service.
The Lila Project
The Big Lottery funded us to provide a play and family support service for
children with life limiting and life threatening conditions. This work was
carried out in partnership with similar projecs in two neighbouring boroughs.
We supported ten families with twenty five children through this project
during the year. Unfortunately March 2006 brought the end of this funding
and the project will not be running next year.
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. Funding for the toy library is always needed to buy new toys and to replace those
which are damaged or destroyed by enthusiastic use! This year we received
some specialist play equipment via the Lila Project.
Like One of the Family
May 2005 saw the launch of our new short film "Like One of the Family".
This was directed by Emma Parsons, a professional film maker working
in partnership with The Media Trust to celebrate 2005 as the Year
of the Volunteer. The film shows the work of our volunteers and
the fun they have with the children and families they support. One
of the young stars of the film was stunned to see himself on the
big screen when we launched the film at the Dalston Rio Cinema! You
can see "Like One of the Family" on our website at www.hfbu.org.uk.
Training for volunteers and carers
We have a comprehensive and well developed training programme for our
carers and volunteers. With continued funding from the Neighbourhood
Renewal Fund we were able to develop and expand this. After careful
consideration we decided not to continue with the accreditation of
this course by the Open College Network. The NRF funding will end in
March 2006.
We have begun, in a small way, to include parents in appropriate
training courses. One parent who attended the Autism Awareness Course
found the theoretical understanding really helpful and her practical
experience of the issues added to the value of the course for carers.
It is clear that there is a real need for training for parents and we
will seek funding to do more of this.
Celebration time!
We used our AGM as an opportunity to celebrate the creativity of
our children by presenting the prizes for our Design a Postcard
competition. The overall winner was Eftal Soral but everyone got
a prize! Eftal's design is now in daily use as the official HFBU
postcard.
The AGM was also the occasion at which we launched our fabulous
new website www.hfbu.org.uk.
Designed by Flash Wilson, it meets the highest standards of
accessibility as well as giving clear information about our
work and services. The pictures of our children are a delight!
Why not have a look for yourself?
Parent power
This year the sun shone for our August picnic and a great time
was had by all. Parents told us how much they valued the chances
to meet one another and share their experiences of parenting a
disabled child. So was born the idea of a regular monthly group
where the children could play safely while parents meet to offer
mutual support.
Parent, February 2006
Parent, February 2006
...and in partnershipAlong with staff from the Primary Care Trust, Social Services, the Learning Turst, Parent Partnership, the Key and the City and Hackney Carers Centre we have been instrumental in setting up a Hackney wide consultation group for parents of disabled children. The Group has made its views known on leisure services, play provision, housing and education in the Borough as well as discussing issues around siblings and looking after yourself. The steering group worked hard to produce a Directory of Services for Disabled Children to help meet the identified need for better information about what is available out there.
This Group will have a say in the planning of the new Centre for Integrated Disabled Children's Services due to open in 2008.
Staff changes
Sadly we had to say goodbye to long serving Project Administrator Gloria Adoch this year. In January 2006 Adijat Bolaji joined the team as our new Administrative Worker.
The staff team as at October 2006 is:
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 Olson: Family Placement Social Worker
The Council of Management
We are lucky enough 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 as at October 2006 is:
Ben Corrigan - Chair
Christoph Hobo - Treasurer
Phil Evans - Company Secretary & Vice Chair
Vicky Ndunagum
Sue Windross
Diane Hughes
Looking forward
We have identified a real need to provide more support especially for
parents of children with challenging behaviour. In 2006 we intend to
set up a service for these families which will involve a regular support
group as well as training opportunities.
We have far more referrals for our core services than we currently have
capacity to meet. We will thus 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 the families value so
much about HFBU.
In 2005/6 Hackney Family Backup was funded by:
The London Borough of Hackney
The Neighbourhood Renewal Fund
The Big Lottery
Hackney Children's 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.