Spring has sprung

At Jigsaw4u the last couple of months have been as busy as the weather, so we are sorry to be bringing you this blog a month late. But as is with spring (and the beginning of a new tax year) we have been busy with new beginnings - New projects, ventures and exciting things to come for the rest of the year.

So this is what we we've up to at Jigsaw4u HQ....

Project Updates

The grief team ran a very successful 6 week grief support group in Feb and March and are already concentrating on the next group due to start in May.

The Disabled Children’s Participation Project has been extended until April 2014, so we expect more exciting things from them over the year. Over Easter they ran a session for the young people around safeguarding, and the importance of understanding safeguarding as a young person, then after all that hard work they got to go bowling! Everyone had a great time and can’t wait to do something like that again, maybe over the summer holidays.

Our current Domestic Violence worker, Emma Webb has just secured the new full time post at Jigsaw4u working on Domestic Violence with Sutton Women’s Aid. Congratulations Emma!!

The Home School Links project are looking to join up with other projects at Jigsaw4u to do the art exhibition again, which was such a brilliant success last year! Hopefully we can get even more young people involved this year, and create some amazing artwork that represents our young people and their feelings about Jigsaw4u. The theme this year is 'putting the pieces back together'. Can’t wait to see what creations come out of the exhibition this year.

We started our new volunteer training programme in April which we are 3 weeks into now, all new volunteers will receive training for all projects across Jigsaw4u from working with young children, disability awareness through to domestic violence and many others. We want our volunteers to be equipped for any situation that might arise during their time here. And we hope to give people an insight into things they may never have thought of trying before. Hopefully our volunteers have been enjoying themselves and want to come back! The next training programme will run in the Autumn so get in touch if you'd like to be involved.

Fundraising News

Sharon Clack has been busy getting the donations and raffle prizes in, here are just a few.

·         10 free Burrito’s from Chippolate in Wimbledon

·         The All England Tennis Club donated a large holdall and Bard Back Book all about Wimbledon Tennis

·         £250 donation from Next

·         15 Easter eggs donated from Asda

Carol Miller's coffee morning raised £279.00

Vicky’s Easter Egg Sale raised £32.40

Sharon Clack’s daughter Vicki made a basket full of Crochet Easter Chicks that raised £32.00

Georgia Fawcett of Hillcross Primary School raised £118 doing a sponsored silence.  The money raised bought the Teddy Bears for the next Grief Support Group

Webb Hits the Wall

Peter Webb is still training hard for his Hadrian’s Wall feat. He has been held back in his training through injury but appears to be back, fighting fit. Here’s what he had to say...

“Unfortunately I have had an injured ankle and not been able to run for the last 4 weeks. I have managed my first run of 10 and 7 miles this week to test my ankle and get back into my running.

I found great motivation from the donation made by someone through Jigsaw 4U.

“Don't give up the training, hope you succeed. My girls are about to lose their dad to cancer.”

It is always good to have these reminders when on a training run to make the pain and effort go away when you can put it into context as to why I am doing this.

This weekend (actually a way to celebrate my birthday) Alex, my wife, has booked a hotel room for us at Windsor for a romantic break. The only catch being that I have to run there under my own steam on Saturday from my house in Sutton (approx. 40 miles!)

As you can imagine I am now only 2 months away from the race and in need to push hard on my training. This is definitely a challenge.

So the plan leading up to the race is:

27^th April – Personal Run – 45 miles Sutton to Windsor

18^th May – North Downs – 50 mile race ½ Centurion Race

22^nd June – The Wall Race 69 miles

It’s going to be a busy 2 months!!!!”

We wish Peter the best of luck with his training, and if you haven’t donated, please do try to give what what you can to spur Peter on with his amazing feat. He really could use some inspiration now! You can find his justgiving page at http://www.justgiving.com/WebbHitsTheWall

That's about it from us this month, with summer parties, fundraisers and art workshops in the planning we will have even more to tell you about in the coming months! And we will keep you updated with Peter's training too.

Jigsaw4u Team. x

Full to the brim - our last 28 days

Thirty days has September,

April, June, and November.

All the rest have thirty-one,

Except—you know which one....

THIS ONE! And we hope a happy shortest month of the year was had by one and all! With only 28 days of news you’d think we would keep this short and sweet, but here at 40 Mill Green Road we have been as busy as ever.

Comings and Goings

We have a had colleagues come and go of recent months and this month we held a leaving lunch for Eny Osung, Advocacy Team Manager. Lisa provided a banquet which tempted those of us who had just started lent! Eny got to feast on his beloved chicken and teary farewells were had. Sad as he was to go, Eny was more than chuffed with his leaving presents – A personalised Tottenham Shirt, A Tottenham Football and some Jigsaw erasers, so he can never forget us!!

While we said goodbye to Eny we have recently welcomed back Trish, our Young Runaways Worker for Sutton, who had been off sick. She’s back and with a good as new back to boot.

Fundraising

On the Feb fundraising front we had Sally Morgan Enterprises raising a whopping £2,769. A staff raffle at a generous cosmetic company generated £626. And Chris Roe’s Race Night raised £950.00!

The Race Night at Cranleigh Tennis and Social Club was a fantastic event. With a great buffet, fully stocked bar and 1970's horse races it was fun for all the family. Although I think it’s safe to say those at Jigsaw HQ are not lucky gamblers. Nothing close to the success of the event could have been pulled off without the work of Chris Roe and all of the friends and family of Jigsaw4u that helped out by selling tickets, arranging the buffet, bringing themselves and others there and betting, so THANK YOU ALL VERY MUCH!!

Another huge thanks to Sharon Clack who this month has brought in:

• Merlin Magic wand donated 10 tickets to Chessington World of Adventures along with a cheque for £30 towards travel costs
• The Toby Carvery kindly gave 10 free carvery meals
• Ely’s Wimbledon £25 gift card
• Wilkinson’s Sutton - £10 gift card

Thank you to all who have fund raised and donated, we are really very grateful for all of you support!

Peter Webb vs. Hadrian’s Wall

After all the excitement of our fundraising so far this year you must be thinking, ‘how could it possibly get better, what more excitement could be coming our way?’ Well one brave soul is going to knock all our socks off (and possibly his own) as he attempts to run...yes RUN...Hadrian’s Wall – you know the massive wall from Roman Britain that now reaches a vast 69 miles across Northern England? That wall! For those of you who might want some context as to how massive this is, we have inserted a little (not to scale) diagram.

Peter Webb lost his father in a tragic accident at 2 ½ years old; he says that throughout his life ‘there have been many times this has not been far from my thoughts [...] It is the right time to move on positively, whilst helping others. I happened to stumble across a local charity Jigsaw4u. I believe the support they offer children going through this difficult time is invaluable’.

 

After stumbling upon us Peter decided to do his run in aid of Jigsaw4u and we plan to support him 100% of the way.

We shall be updating you on his progress, hopefully with words from the man himself and some pictures of how he is getting on. I know that none of us can imagine what it is going to be like, so by way of encouragement I proffer the following video of how I imagine it will go down.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1L8SqPm0o3s

(In case anyone doesn't get the reference...it’s Peter Pan, because his name is Peter...there will be a lot of these references along the way so I apologize in advance!!)

More importantly here is the link to Peter’s JustGiving page.

www.justgiving.com/WebbHitsTheWall

PLEASE DO DONATE GENEROUSLY this man is running for longer than most of us could stay awake for, and just think how much Keifer Sutherland achieves in his 24 hours? This is not to be taken lightly and all donation will be so greatly appreciated, big or small.

Project Updates

After all of that there’s not much time (space) to tell you about what our projects have been up to, but we’ll give it a go! The Grief Team held their grief support weekend and had a fabulous time, with a great turn out. Some of the schools that our Home School Links project works with have asked for further days of work which is absolutely brilliant. The Young Runaways, Disabled Children’s Participation and Transition Key Work projects have all been involved in the latest Young Inspector’s report of Sutton CAMHS. Our young people did an inspection of CAMHS and told staff what they thought of the service. They have since been asked to be part of a young persons’ forum that CAMHS would like to set up to increase young people’s involvement in the service. The Transition Key Work service have started their Social Skills sessions which are going really well, and our Disabled Children’s Participation Officer has been involved in setting up a young person’s shadow group to the Local Safeguarding Children’s Board, which will include Jigsaw4u young people, so they will get to inform decision making and discussion around safeguarding children in Sutton.

That’s most certainly not all we've up to at Jigsaw4u HQ but there’s just so much we can’t fit it all in!!!

Hopefully we will keep you updated with Peter Webb’s progress in between our monthly blogs, so stay tuned for pained training run pictures!! And please don’t forget to donate if you can, as Tesco puts it so well – ‘Every little helps’.

Until next time...Jigsaw4u Team. x

P.s. We didn't receive any Valentine’s Day cards so they haven’t featured in this month’s blog. You only have yourselves to blame for not weighing them properly and putting on the correct stamps!

January 2013

So as is customary in our Gregorian calendar, Christmas came and went. The young people of Jigsaw4u were treated to presents kindly donated by the staff and friends of Breeze Yoga Beckenham and ASDA. The young people were thoroughly chuffed with their gifts so THANK YOU all very much.

 Santa Fun Run

Jenny  Christmas caroling

As well as our bowling trip, the grief team took a group of young people and their carers to a traditional Christmas party at Southside House in Wimbledon, and had two Macmillan Christmas parties at Harrods and Mandarin Oriental.

We had great fun at our own Christmas lunch at the Jigsaw office and our party at The Holiday Inn in Sutton. Everyone enjoyed the Christmas pud, secret santa and the Gangnam Style disco!

What's going on?

Sadly before Christmas we lost one of our projects – the Advocacy service, and Advocacy manager Eny Osung. As a member of the Jigsaw4u family for 12 years it will be sad to see him go, but we must! We’ll be having a leaving lunch mid February. Hopefully Eny will be able to stay in touch with Jigsaw and help us out with other projects in the future.

Eny Osung

On a more positive note, we have been given some Comic Relief funding to run Merton and Sutton Sexual Exploitation projects which will be run by our Young Runaways team Patricia Alin and Sindia Malhotra, so that’s even more great work that’s going to be going on at 40 Mill Green Road.

Fun Day display

Following the Disabled Children’s Project fun day we have been working on tackling the accessibility of transport, how to cope with bullying and looking at whether there is training for bus drivers in how to support young people being bullied on buses. We are also working with Sutton Parents’ Forum, Contact a Family, the Sutton Transition Team and the ASD service to produce a new and improved ‘Transition’ leaflet to explain the process and hopefully improve it for young people going through transition in Sutton. We are hoping to see changes to transport, leisure services and school bullying policies as a result of the event so watch this space!

Our Choice new issue

The Disabled Children’s Participation Project has also published the new edition of their magazine ‘Our Choice’ which is distributed to all young people in Sutton on the Disability Register.

In other news - The Grief Support Team are starting their new programme of groups next week, our Home School Links workers are back into schools after the festivities and some of our projects including our Domestic Violence project have been to the local mosque in Morden to promote our service to the wider community.

Fundraising

The family and friends of Sam Chapman raised an amazing £1500 for Jigsaw4u at The Sam Chapman Memorial Race Night. It’s an annual race night held in the memory of Sam Chapman, whose family attended the grief support groups here at Jigsaw4u after she passed away. Her father and mother came in with the donation, but we know that all of her family and friends helped so much in making the event a success and raising such an amazing amount of money for Jigsaw, so thank you all very much!

Sally Morgan and Pam Byfield

Other fundraising news includes a £250 cash donation from Next PLC for the second year running, a £272 donation from Riddlesdown Collegiate and a generous £1000 from TV psychic Sally Morgan who donated her Celebrity Come Dine With Me winnings!

Thank you all so much for all your help, all the staff at Jigsaw4u and the children, young people and families we work with will always be very grateful for your support!

There's more to come....

And they’re off....On the 2 March there will be another Race Night, at Cranleigh Tennis and Social Club, SW19 3LX in aid of Jigsaw4u. This is a great chance to put your cash where your horse is and raise some money for charity all at the same time. There will be 8 races throughout the night which you can bet on, only 50p a bet, and you can also 'buy' a horse for £3 - all owners of winning horses will win a prize on the night. Get in touch with info@jigsaw4u.org.uk if you’d like to get tickets.

Jigsaw4u stand at info fair

We’re also having a prospective volunteer night on Wednesday 6^th March 6pm – 7.30pm so if you know of any prospective volunteers,email the above address with their contact details and we will send them an invitation to come along and hear all about the opportunities we have here at J4U.

Hope you've all had a great January and see you again soon with our February update; any Valentine's Day cards sent in will feature in next month's blog so get sending - chocolates and flowers also appreciated.

The Jigsaw4u Team. x

Our 2012 - It's a long'un but a good'un

OUR 2012

If the Mayans are right and the world is going to end tomorrow then A) We had better get sharing this blog soon otherwise no one will get to read it, but more importantly B) What a year we have had to go out on at JIGSAW4U!

Throughout the year Jigsaw4u has gone through a lot of changes; we have said goodbye to old friends and gained wonderful new ones and we are looking on up towards 2013 with fresh eyes and a spring in our step. Here is a little low down of our 2012, and some of the amazing things we have been getting up to at Mill Green Road and beyond.

Project updates

Grief Team

The Grief Support Team have run two programmes of grief support groups, and had two successful parties. Although funding from Merton and Sutton sadly came to an end, happily new funding was acquired from Games Aid, and a new partnership was formed with Macmillan Cancer Support. This was launched in September, just in time for us to host our first Macmillan coffee morning. This saw our staff come into their own in our very own Great British Bake Off, with bakes even Mary Berry would have thought were at least alright.

Art work

The Home School Links team have been equally busy throughout schools across Sutton and Merton this year. They had an art day workshop in the office working with children using clay, paints, collage etc to prepare for the art exhibition.  This took place at the Merton Civic Centre.  The theme was ‘Jigsaw4u & Me’ and the artwork depicted what working with Jigsaw meant to the children.  There were many moving pieces of work and the children described their feelings about Jigsaw4u – some of which included things like "Jigsaw4u makes me feel safe", "Jigsaw4u makes me feel special" "I'm looking forward to a bright, calm future and leaving all the rough times I've been through behind". Although the artwork was mainly from children on the Home School Links project, the exhibition also featured work from the Young Runaways, Domestic Violence and Grief Support projects.

Some of these lovely children also spoke at the Jigsaw4u AGM in November about how much Jigsaw4u had helped them and how much they felt supported by their lovely Home School Links workers.

Art Exhibition Artists

The Disabled Children’s Participation Project ran workshops over the summer to support young people with ASD through the transition process. At the end of the workshops they took groups of young people on PGL trips where they got to abseil, trampoline, and zip wire - but primarily laugh at our staff for forgetting they weren't young enough to do the same, but they gave it a good go anyway! The article written about the workshops featured in the Short Breaks Network’s Better Breaks Journal which you can read here...

http://www.shortbreaksnetwork.org.uk/Resources/Short%20Breaks/Documents/Better%20Breaks%20August%202012.pdf

Award Winning Young Person - Bradley Dixon

Our other projects, including Advocacy, Domestic Abuse, Early Years and Young Runaways, continued to support children and young people in all different situations, doing a range of work with the young people – some projects ran groups such as the Young Runaways girls’ group and the Early Years Dad’s group, others provided support and counselling for children and families, some projects at Jigsaw4u also produce magazines for young people, these are written and edited by children in care and disabled young people. We have also run a series of ‘Young Inspector’ courses, which get young people involved in the decision making and inspection of local services – from the friendliness of the staff to the information displayed, even the decor, our young people have been integral in the makeovers of services throughout Merton and Sutton.

Fundraising

Juan Sanchez on the fun run

From the London Marathon, St Bees to Robin Hood’s Bay, in Santa suits and football kits we have walked, run, sung, packed and drunk all in aid of the children at Jigsaw4u. Gary Powell ran the London Marathon, Chris Roe did the Coast to Coast walk, Andrew Searle swam 5k and the children of Mitcham Swimming Academy did a sponsored swim. Friends of Jigsaw4u brought their FIFA game to life at our football tournament and Juan Sanchez, Marie Wilson and Michelle Mullarkey ran the Santa Fun Run- ALL FOR JIGSAW4U, so thank you very much to all of you fit people!!

Not to be pigeon holed by exercised based events, we also raised money from bag packing in ASDA, holding a race night at The Grange, being named the charity of the CAMRA Sutton and Croydon Beer Festival, dancing our socks off at a Ceilidh and doing our best not to destroy your favourite Christmas carols in both Centre Court Wimbledon and ASDA in Mitcham, with a little help from our friends at Gorringe Park Primary School.

Carol singing

All of these events were a great success and we’ve managed to raise lots of money for the children of Jigsaw4u, but only because of the help from all of our friends, families and volunteers so thank you very much for signing up for it all, we couldn’t do it without you!!

We like to party, party

Paralympics

Not only are we here to support and work with the children that come to Jigsaw4u, we also like to remind them what it’s like to be a kid, have fun and enjoy yourself!! As well as bowling, weekend trips away and Christmas parties, most notably this year we took groups of our young people to the Olympics and Paralympics, and to AFC Wimbledon - where they not only had the pleasure of watching a game, but they got to meet a REAL LIFE WOMBLE!!  

We just can’t do it alone

There is no way that we could fit in everything we have done at Jigsaw4u over the last year, at least no one would read it if we did put it all in!! But we would like to say that none of it would have been possible without the dedication of our wonderful staff, our amazing team of volunteers, our supportive trustees and our families, friends and other organisations that have helped us in countless different ways this year.

So provided the world doesn’t end tomorrow, we look forward to working with you all again next year and doing bigger and better things for the children and families of Jigsaw4u!!!

Christmas presents donated by
ASDA and Breeze Yoga Beckenham

AGM

Most importantly, MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

The Jigsaw4u Team. x