Full Story:
http://www.stopinjusticenow.com/News_0595.htm
SEVEN months ago Lauren Malins was a young girl with the weight of the world on her shoulders. Her mother Nikki, a former gymnastics coach, was confined to a wheelchair after a bout of viral meningitis and needed round-the-clock care: though there were some part-time helpers, Lauren took the lion’s share. In a touching Life in the Day article in The Sunday Times magazine, Lauren, from Margate, Kent, described her daily routine, from making coffee and taking her mother her tablets, helping her dress and wash, to making her own breakfast and her mother’s lunch before she set off for school. “Sometimes I don’t want to go,” she said. “Mum always says ‘Go on, I’m fine’. But I’m nervous all day that she’s going to fall out of her chair . . . it makes it very hard to concentrate.” Lauren’s practicality and lack of self-pity struck a chord: there was a huge response. Hundreds of readers wrote and sent cheques wanting to help Lauren and Nikki, who had little in the way of luxuries and were trapped at home through lack of transport. But appearing in The Sunday Times started a process that has transformed their lives. A charity helped provide a car, allowing Nikki to pick up Lauren, now 11, from school, “like everyone’s else’s mum”. Now they can get out, Nikki plays wheelchair basketball once a week and Lauren has started dance classes. “Children wrote wanting to be pen pals and I’ve made friends all over the country,” she says. So one young carer’s life has been changed: this year’s Sunday Times Christmas Appeal, which we are launching today, aims to change the lives of many more. In previous years, Sunday Times readers have been hugely generous. Last year, more than £1m was raised for the Seeing Is Believing campaign to cure and prevent blindness in the Third World. Matching funding from Standard Chartered bank took the total to more than £2m. This year the money raised will benefit The Princess Royal Trust for Carers, which runs 83 centres all over Britain providing support for more than 15,000 children struggling to care for sick or disabled parents. Children who visit the trust’s centres – some only eight – are often having to deal not just with illness but with parental depression or substance abuse. The centre is a safe haven where they can play, get a hot meal or link up with others in the same boat. Many of the centres are at risk of closure, despite the fact that the number of children being referred to them continues to rise. Your money could keep them open: £20,000 would keep one centre running for a year. Part of Lauren’s new-found confidence is down to her weekly visits to a centre. “We’ve made a video about ourselves called The Invisible People,” she says. “Being a young carer can be really tough but nothing will stop me looking after mum. The difference is now we feel like we’re part of the world.” As part of our Christmas appeal we are also continuing to raise money for Help for Heroes, the charity set up to support wounded soldiers. Launched in September, it has already received more than than £1m in donations, more than £100,000 from Sunday Times’ readers. Help for Heroes aims to raise £5m to build a swimming pool at Headley Court, a rehabilitation centre in Surrey which specialises in “complex trauma”. Many of the soldiers who have been treated there have learnt to walk again after losing limbs in Afghanistan or Iraq.
No comments:
Post a Comment