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Scope ask - What was your favourite book as a child?

Can you remember your favourite story book as a child? Who was your favourite character? Peter Pan? Matilda? Maybe Mowgli from the Jungle Book?

Children gain an awful lot from characters in stories; they look up to them, identify with them and aspire to be like them, and it’s a huge part of developing the imagination and learning about themselves and society.

Unfortunately, the number of impairments portrayed in children’s stories are few and far between, and disabled children often feel excluded and cannot relate to the characters in their books.

With the help of disabled children, Scope has created an amazing range of books to help a child understand their condition and build their confidence for the future. The books feature disabled children and explain a child’s condition in their own language.

Celine is one of the children who helped Scope with this project. She has cerebral palsy and needs assistance to be able to walk. When she was six years old, she helped Scope to develop Celine’s New Splints - a fictional story-book leaflet designed for disabled children to read themselves, or for parents to read to their child. The leaflet explains the process of being fitted for splints in a way that young children can appreciate, enjoy and understand.

Celine explains: “When I was little and I had my first splints I was quite scared because I didn’t know what it was going to be like.  Celine’s New Splints lets children know what is going to happen and hopefully they don’t feel scared anymore. I loved helping to write Celine’s New Splints.  You don’t see many disabled children in books and I’m really proud that I helped change that.”

You can download the book and share with children you know.

Thank you for your generous support of our work and for helping us continue to make the world a more inclusive place for disabled children.

Childhood Cancer Drives Two Thirds of Parents into Debt - CLIC Sargent

Parents of children with cancer are struggling to cope with the unexpected costs of travel, childcare, food and accommodation while their child has treatment, with 66% turning to borrowing to make ends meet. The worrying statistic is revealed today by the UK’s leading children and young people’s cancer charity CLIC Sargent. The charity also found that three in four (76%) parents reported there was a major impact on their family finances.

CLIC Sargent sought the views of 335 young people with cancer and parents or carers of children with cancer for their report Counting the Costs of Cancer, published today at the start of Childhood Cancer Awareness Month (December). Parents and young people told the charity that they spent on average £367 and £277 respectively on cancer-related expenses every month, and with treatment lasting up to three years, the bills soon mounted up. Read more.

 

Japan 6 months on - Save the Children

CHRIS STEELE-PERKINS/MAGNUM
Children playing at a Child Friendly Space run by Save the Children at Okaido Primary school, Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan

Six months on from the devastating earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan, the disaster's impact still haunts children. Save the children are there, using their expertise to help Japan's youngest survivors smile again.

Globally they have raised an amazing £12.6m for this appeal. The sheer scale of the disaster meant that despite a strong government response, there were still large unmet needs. These gaps were in education, emotional support and protection for children – areas in which Save the Children have global expertise.

NSPCC gives evidence in EU committee

In July the NSPCC was invited to give evidence at the House of Lords EU select committee on social policy and consumer protection on children’s rights in the European Union. The focus of the session was the European Union (EU) Agenda for the Rights of the Child, which sets out the EU's priorities for children over the next five years. The evidence sessions are part of the committee's ongoing routine scrutiny work on the document.

Naureen Khan, the NSPCC’s European adviser, gave evidence on behalf of the NSPCC: “The NSPCC has been active at the European level for over 10 years now. The EU is increasingly taking more legislative action child protection. We want to make sure that the legislation adopted at EU level offers the greatest possible protection for children in the UK.”

East Africa Emergency Appeal - Save the Children

PER-ANDERS PETTERSSON

The worst drought in decades has wiped out livestock, crops and income in large parts of Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia and left over 12 million people in the grip of a devastating food crisis.

The situation in Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia is getting worse, with 6 million children facing starvation after severe drought lead to the devastation of income sources, failed harvests and the death of livestock. This year has been the driest since 1950, with food prices in some areas rising by 500 per cent.

In Somalia, 20 per cent of families have been left with no food whatsoever, with the number of malnourished children under five rising from 390,000 to 450,000 just within the last few weeks. More than 900,000 people have fled the country for overcrowded camps in Ethiopia and Kenya, whilst 1.5 million are displaced within the country itself.
We are rapidly providing life-saving food, water and medicine for children across the region, even in war-torn areas of Somalia where we are one of the few international organisations on the ground. We’ve launched one of our biggest ever emergency responses and we’ve already reached over 1 million people – and we’re aiming to reach 2 million in total. We are appealing for £65 million to urgently scale up our programmes across East Africa and reach more children and families before its too late. We are hoping to do this with our “Fill a truck” campaign, where we are asking supporters to help fill our trucks. Each truck contains life saving food and supplies: enough to feed 4,000 children for a month.

New dementia treatments in ten years – Alzheimer's Society

An Alzheimer's Society research programme could lead to new dementia treatments within ten years, leading scientists said.

The Drug Discovery programme could lead to treatments that give benefits five times longer than current dementia drugs and delay the onset of the condition.

Drug Discovery will test treatments that are already licensed for other conditions. The drugs have additional actions that may be effective in treating the changes that occur in the brain in Alzheimer's disease. Six drugs, identified using a novel systematic approach, are being fast-tracked for exploration in scientific studies. Clinical trials will then be held across the UK to see if they have benefits for people with dementia.

As the drugs are already available they will be cheaper and quicker to translate into dementia treatments if successful. Alzheimer's Society will test three drugs over a 5 - 10 year period at a cost of £15 million. By comparison, it costs one billion US dollars (approx £612.7million GBP) and 20 years to deliver an effective treatment from scratch.

Jeremy Hughes, Chief Executive of Alzheimer's Society says,

'This is an exciting day in the race to find new treatments and eventually a cure for people with dementia. There are not enough clinical trials for dementia happening in the UK which is why Alzheimer's Society is responding by launching Drug Discovery. We need £4,000 every day for the next 10 years for the first phase of this groundbreaking initiative and we are asking all those concerned with dementia to help us raise this. Together we can transform hundreds of thousands of lives.'

J and H Payroll Giving Ltd announces the purchase of CAF’s professional fundraising arm – Sharing the Caring

J and H Payroll Giving Ltd (JHPG) are pleased to be able to announce today that they are to acquire CAF’s professional fundraising arm, Sharing the Caring (StC). The directors of JHPG successfully launched Bell Fundraising Ltd* in 2003, a company which provides a fully comprehensive payroll giving fundraising service. Along with a third director, they also launched in 2009, Bell Donor Management Ltd**, a charity focussed donor management and reconciliation service to help their clients gain the most from payroll giving donations.  

Johanna Wright, Managing Director of JHPG, says "We are looking forward to building on the excellent reputation that StC has gained during its time under CAF’s management and are also very much looking forward to working with our new charity and corporate partners. We are firmly committed to taking BFL, BDM and StC forward into a further era of growth and stability and see the addition of StC to the group as extremely beneficial to our current clients."

Helen Wasey, Managing Director of BFL adds "Jo and I strongly believe that we are perfectly placed and are at the right stage in our own development to take on the added scale that StC brings.  StC is a good fit with our other companies, whose mission is to promote tax effective giving to raise vital income for our charity partners in an ethical and professional manner."

Media contact Helen Wasey 01732 457166 or 07739 560306 hwasey@sharingthecaring.org.uk