Break

Registered Charity No. 286650

What exactly is ‘Break’?

Break is a charity founded 40 years ago to help vulnerable people.  It improves the lives of vulnerable children, adults and families and helps them to move on.  Break provides respite care and holidays, support and supervision over a 12 week residential period for families in crisis, a day centre for adults with learning difficulties, five high quality children’s homes, services for women with mental health issues, and a mentoring scheme for young people living in and leaving cares

Tell us a bit about yourself and what you do for the charity.

My role is Communications Manager and I am responsible for both internal and external communication for Break.  Informing all the different centres spread across Norfolk and our 34 shops and raising the profile of Break and supporting fundraisers in the media

What’s been happening at Break recently?

We have recently launched our Christmas appeal – Not all Christmas Presents Fit in a Box – to raise money specifically to keep our service going – food costs have risen by 20%, fuel costs for travel for our holiday guests has risen by 25% and light and heat across our centres has risen by 29%

10 of our young people from the children’s homes have just returned from a trip of a lifetime to Morocco, funded by Authentic Morocco who tailor made the trip for the children at cost, staff and supporters doing the Yorkshire Three Peaks challenge, Anthony Marett of Marett’s Chariots funding the transport to and from Luton Airport and Virgin money donating money towards the trip.  We even had a live radio link up with Morocco on North Norfolk Radio!

At a recent dinner at Holkham Hall, guests and sponsors raised £58,000 to support the development of Break’s services

What can people do to help the charity?

Please support our Christmas Appeal – if you can collect £1 from your mates at your Christmas parties, or hold a dress down day at school or work, or organise a fundraising event, Break would be truly grateful.  Every penny really does count.

If you have a few spare hours a week, please consider volunteering in one of our shops or becoming a fundraising volunteer

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Scope

Registered Charitty No. 208231

What exactly is ‘Scope’?

Scope is a disability organisation which focuses on people with cerebral palsy.

Disabled people face many barriers in our society – including difficulties travelling on inaccessible public transport, going to the school of their choice or getting a job because of prejudice from employers. Scope’s mission is to drive the change to make our society the first where disabled people achieve equality.

Tell us a bit about yourself and what you do for the charity.

I’m Suzanne Stevenson, the Press and Public Relations Manager for the charity and have worked at Scope for nearly two years. I co-ordinate the work of the press team, leading on media strategy for promoting Scope’s events and activities and providing guidance on dealing with a range of enquiries from the media. Before joining Scope I worked in news journalism for eight years.

What’s been happening at Scope recently?

We have been working to raise awareness of the UN Convention on Disability – a new international treaty that will increase disabled people’s rights in the UK. Scope and other disability organisations recently presented a 50,000 signature petition to No.10 Downing Street to try to persuade the Government to ratify the whole treaty, without opting out of any parts of it.

We have also been doing a big promotional drive to the local and regional press to raise awareness about our shops and their role in our work campaigning to achieve disabled people’s equality.

What can people do to help the charity?

Our Time to Get Equal campaign aims to build a mass movement of one million people – disabled and non-disabled – to help achieve disabled people’s equality.

To find out more about the campaign’s latest activities and how you can support it, visit the website www.timetogetequal.org.uk

You can also support our work in other ways –for example by choosing to buy your Christmas cards from Scope – 100% of the profit from our festive cards and giftware goes to supporting our work with disabled people. You can find the nearest store in your area by clicking on the link below. http://www.scope.org.uk/shop/shopsmap.php

We are always looking for high quality donations for our shops so if you have any items you want to donate, do drop them off!

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