Charity
Each year different charities are selected to receive the sponsorship money raised by the event and over the last 17 years £713,568 has been raised in total for a wide variety of worthy causes. In 2010 two local charities - Home-Start, Cambridge and Wallace Cancer Care - have been chosen to benefit from the money raised.
Home-Start Cambridge & District’s volunteers visit families at home each week, supporting parents in situations as diverse as isolation, bereavement, multiple births, illness, disability or who are just finding parenting a struggle. They provide non-judgemental practical and emotional support and help build the family’s confidence and ability to cope. We support families in Cambridge City and 27 of its surrounding villages. Home-Start UK runs more services and has more volunteers supporting more families than any other family support charity in the UK. Our work is at the early intervention stage to ensure that problems being experienced in the family or by the parent do not lead to a deterioration in the emotional and physical wellbeing of the children.
The charity has a good record of reaching families considered by many agencies as ‘hard to reach’. Some families are more open to support from our volunteers because they are not from the statutory sector. Parents welcome Home-Start volunteers into their home and see them as non-stigmatising, visiting them from choice, not as a paid worker. All volunteers are recruited from the local community are checked by the Criminal Record Bureau and undergo a three month training scheme of one day a week before working with families.
Home-Start Cambridge is one of 336 Home-Starts across the UK. 16,000 trained parent volunteers support almost 34,000 families and over 71,000 children in their own homes. For more information click here to visit their website.
Wallace Cancer Care aims to ease the suffering and distress of the many cancer in- and out-patients in Cambridge and East Anglia by providing information, practical, emotional and psychological support, and effective self-help skills, to enable patients, their carers and their families cope with the difficulties of diagnosis, treatment and beyond, free of charge.
Specialist nurses, counsellors, complementary therapists and trained volunteers can talk to patients, carers and family members about all aspects of treatment, worries and concerns they may have as well as physical, mental and emotional wellbeing.
The Drop-in Centre in the hospital concourse provides relevant and appropriate information, guidance and direction to national resources, support groups, legal, financial and social support services, counsellors and complementary therapists. It is staffed by two former oncology nurses and a team of specially trained volunteers.
Our Complementary Care Centre at Wallace House, 7 Red Cross Lane provides a calm environment in which patients can just come and relax between appointments at the hospital or take part in a number of group activities (Food For Life, Relaxation, Massage, Yoga, Face Forward, Pure Colour, Aromasticks) or receive up to six free complementary therapies (Reflexology, Hearts, Reiki, Indian Head Massage, Aromatherapy and Massage, Counselling). For more information click here to visit our website.
