Next month, for Childhood Day, schools across Scotland and the rest of the UK will come together to raise funds for the NSPCC. This will help us deliver our services and support children across the country.
Childhood Day is the charity’s flagship fundraising event, when the public are encouraged to embrace their inner child, celebrating play to put the fun into fundraising.
As part of the celebration on 10 June, we are encouraging schools and nurseries to take part in The Big Breaktime – an extra hour of play with pupils, staff and parents being encouraged to give a small donation towards funding vital NSPCC projects, like Childline.
https://youtu.be/mMcOHBaKkN0
Schools can sign up for The Big Breaktime via the NSPCC’s Childhood Day hub The Big Breaktime | NSPCC From there, they will be able to download lots of exciting resources to help them plan a Big Breaktime in their school.
To sign up to the Big Breaktime, all you have to do is visit the NSPCC website, search for The Big Breaktime and fill in your school’s details with the registration form.
We’ve seen a dramatic rise in the number of homeless veterans seeking help since the pandemic. With the rising cost of living crisis, we know the situation is going to get worse.
Too often former members of the Armed Forces miss out on housing support because they aren’t identified as a veteran. As leading voices in the veterans housing sector, we’ve joined the No Homeless Veterans [www.nohomelessveterans.org.uk] campaign to urge local authorities to do more.
It’s vital that when someone needs help with housing, they are asked whether they’ve served in the Forces. If they have, this should be recorded. Once identified, they can be directed towards support that’s available.
Many, particularly in Scotland, already do, but all local authorities across the UK should be identifying veterans quickly. There is no need for them to be sofa surfing, bouncing from hostel to hostel, or sleeping on the streets. Our heroes deserve better and it’s inexcusable to leave them out in the cold.
Yours sincerely
Richard Gammage, CEO, Stoll
Andrew Lord MBE, CEO, Alabaré
Bernard Stonestreet, Executive Secretary/Founder, East Sussex Veterans Hub
Tim Stockings, CEO, Haig Housing
Sheena MacKay, Case Manager, Help for Heroes
Steve Bentham-Bates, CEO, Help 4 Homeless Veterans
Moira Bayne, CEO, Housing Options Scotland
Colonel (Ret’d) Tony Gauvain, Chair/CEO, PTSD Resolution
Emrys Rogers, Head of Housing & Assurance, Royal Air Force Benevolent Fund
Mark Shields, Head of Community Support, Royal Air Forces Association
Brigadier (Ret’d) Martin Nadin OBE, Chief Executive, Scottish Veterans Residences
This academic year has seen the return of National exams and Highers in Scotland after a two-year hiatus due to the pandemic. For many children and their parents and carers, the exam period can be an anxious and stressful time.
A return to normality in September has seen Childline provide more support to anxious students as end-of-year tests loomed on the horizon.
In the year between April 2021 and March 2022, Childline practitioners delivered 1,734 counselling sessions to children and young people across Scotland and the rest of the UK with concerns about exam stress and revision, which is a 62% rise on the previous year.
When talking to Childline counsellors about their upcoming exams this month, children shared that their worries were affecting their mental health, anxiety levels and ability to sleep.
It is important for young people to know that they aren’t alone if they are feeling like this. Instead, that they are encouraged to share any concerns or worries with their friends or a trusted adult.
Parents and carers can help by reassuring their child that they are there to listen to what they might be feeling and to help them to take the time to think about what to do next.
There are lots of places young people can get support, including the Childline website where they can get advice on dealing with exam stress, visit our message boards or even use an art box to draw through what they want to happen and look at potential next steps.
Childline is here for every child and young person and our specially trained counsellors are also ready 24/7 to discuss exam worries and other concerns free on 0800 1111 or www.childline.org.uk
Between 16th – 22nd May, Greenpeace and Everyday Plastic are running the Big Plastic Count, and the Greenpeace Edinburgh Group is taking part.
This will be the UK’s biggest ever investigation into household plastic waste, and what really happens to our recycling.
The UK produces more plastic waste per person than almost any other country, only the USA is worse.
We need to take much faster action to clean up this plastic mess, which spoils Edinburgh’s neighbourhoods, and harms our climate, nature and health.
This year, the government is starting to decide on legal targets to reduce plastic waste. Greenpeace Edinburgh volunteers want them to set a target to reduce single-use plastic by 50% by 2025 and ban dumping our waste onto other countries.
I still can’t believe how much plastic I end up with every time I do a supermarket shop. It has gotten to the point that I hardly even notice all the wrapping I bring home because it has felt impossible to find plastic-free versions of my favourite products.
But every time my bin hits its spilling point, my single-use plastic shame stares me in the face. Do we really need bananas wrapped in plastic? Or little crisp bags wrapped in a bigger bag just for convenience?
It would be best to stop producing so much plastic in the first place but if we could at least find ways to make recycling easy and rewarding. For instance, if we could take our plastic bottles back to the shop and receive a small refund then Leith Links would be squeaky clean.
Greenpeace volunteers have been taking action on plastic pollution for years. For example, in September 2021 we did a beach clean, where the majority of rubbish was plastic that should have been recycled, or even better, not produced in the first place.
We, like lots of other Edinburgh residents are trying to do their bit, and Government, supermarkets and brands need to do theirs to cut plastic too.
A board has been ‘planted’ on Silverknowes Roundabout, inviting people to ‘Advertise Here’.
Is it possible the organisation dealing with the management of roundabouts is promoting the erection of such advertising boards on the actual roundabout?
How can they be so stupid to even think of doing so?
It is obviously meant to catch people’s atttention while they are also driving and navigating a roundabout!
Surely the transport authorities must overrule this idiotic rule?
With the elections for Scotland’s local authorities happening on May 5th, it is important to emphasise the vital role councils play in helping blind and partally sighted people to live as independently and inclusively as possible.
People with a visual impairment are more likely to depend on services from their local council, for information that’s readily available in alternative formats, public transport that’s accessible, streets and thoroughfares that allow people to walk safely and without obstacles, education that allows every child to reach their full potential, and employment that’s informed by a better understanding of what those with sight loss can do.
Around 178,000 people are currently living with a significant degree of sight loss in Scotland, of whom over 4,000 are children and young people. Our ageing population and the increase in sight-theatening conditions such as diabetes means this number will, inevitably, grow.
Let’s make one positive legacy of the upheaval we’ve all been through a resolve to make sure we re-emerge as a society in which no one is left at the margins.
Our local authorities are absolutely key to this.
James Adams
Director, Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) Scotland
With kitten season nearly here, Cats Protection is releasing a documentary highlighting the potentially tragic risks of buying underage kittens online from unscrupulous sellers who put profit before welfare.
The Big Kitten Con, narrated by Caroline Quentin, features traumatic accounts of kittens being sold at less than the legal age for commercial sale, which is eight-weeks, and sadly dying from debilitating illnesses.
Last year, 340,000 of the 500,000 cats that were purchased in the UK were found online on sites like Facebook, Gumtree, Pets 4 Homes and Preloved.
Though many sellers are responsible people, there are unscrupulous individuals who will exploit the anonymity of the internet to sell kittens that have been taken from their mums too young, denying them vital nutrients and social development, while passing them off as healthy, eight-week-old kittens.
As well as giving advice, we are encouraging the public to sign a petition calling on the Government to regulate cat breeding. It has just been introduced in Scotland and we would like to see England, Wales and Northern Ireland follow suit.
We want anyone who breeds two or more litters of kittens in a year to be licensed, which would make them subject to regular inspections.
To watch Cats Protection’s The Big Kitten Con video and to sign Cats Protection’s petition, please visit www.cats.org.uk/kitten-con
Yours faithfully
Madison Rogers,
Acting Head of Advocacy & Government Relations, Cats Protection
Plans to dismantle the Human Rights Act and create legal hurdles for ordinary people who seek to hold public bodies to account are abhorrent.
The bereaved parents of soldiers who died in ‘Snatch’ Land Rovers in Iraq and Afghanistan sued the Ministry of Defence under the Human Rights Act. Their children were sent to war in lightly armoured vehicles which were known not to offer enough protection against roadside bombs.
The Government suggests that cases brought under the Human Rights Act are often trivial and without merit.
What happened to those families was not trivial and their cases were found to be valid. If they had not fought for justice, the MoD’s failings would simply have been allowed to happen without any accountability.
Human rights claims play an essential role in keeping organisations in check and ensuring justice where those human rights are breached. We should all be alarmed by the Government’s approach.
Neil McKinley
President, Association of Personal Injury Lawyers (APIL)
Watching a large number of medical staff gather around my baby boy to resuscitate him was the scariest thing I have ever been through.
We were at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, an hour away from our home, after rushing my son, Carter, there ourselves. Eventually the doctors managed to stabilise Carter, but he was still struggling with his breathing and needed to be intubated and kept on the paediatric intensive care unit (PICU). He had developed a respiratory virus from a cold and as a result was experiencing breathing apnoea due to a build-up of mucus in his lungs.
We went to see him in PICU where he was covered in tubes and I was just sitting there, looking at him and felt my heart break into pieces. There was a chair next to Carter’s bed that I was prepared to not move from until he got better. But with parents unable to stay on intensive care wards with their children, even this wasn’t an option.
As I started to try and work out how I was going to cope with this situation I was told about The Sick Children’s Trust and its wonderful Acorn House. It’s one of ten ‘Homes from Home’ the charity runs around the country, giving families a free place to stay close to their seriously ill children.
I was still hesitant at first about leaving Carter’s side, but when the nurses told me that Acorn House was just minutes away from the hospital the more comfortable I felt about staying there.
I knew it was likely we would be in hospital for a while; The Sick Children’s Trust supports families for an average of 14 nights when their children are on the incentive care units, so knowing we had a place to stay took away a lot of these extra stresses.
When I arrived at Acorn House, I felt at home. There was a kitchen, living room and even a playroom so I knew straight away that I could bring Elsie, Carter’s older sister, to stay as well when the time was right.
This year, The Sick Children’s Trust is celebrating 40 years of keeping families, like mine, together with their seriously ill children while they are in hospital. Since the charity was launched in 1982 they have made sure more than 73,000 families have been able to stay just minutes away from their ill child’s hospital bedside and I really don’t know what we would have done without their support.
Acorn House was our ‘Home from Home’ for two weeks while Carter recovered, and he’s been doing amazing ever since.
He’s reached all his milestones and is such a loud and energetic character. As part of their 40th anniversary celebrations The Sick Children’s Trust is aiming to raise £237,000 to support families in all 148 rooms of its ten ‘Homes from Home’ for 40 nights.
I’m encouraging everyone to think about families like mine who suddenly end up in hospital with their child critically ill and not knowing how they can stay with them. No parent wants to leave their child while they’re in hospital and by supporting The Sick Children’s Trust and its ‘Homes from Home’ you can make sure more families can be together.
Without Acorn House Carter’s time in hospital would have been so much harder. I don’t think I would’ve have coped. Please donate £40 today by visiting sickchildrenstrust.org
We’re inviting outdoor enthusiasts among your readers to join charity Meningitis Now on an exhilarating but scenic adventure to take on a Three Peaks Challenge and help us beat the deadly disease.
The Three Peaks Challenge between Friday 10 and Sunday 12 June entails climbing Snowdon, Scafell Pike and Ben Nevis, the highest peaks in Wales, England and Scotland over just 36 hours.
It is not for the faint-hearted, but those taking part will take an enormous amount of satisfaction from the challenge whilst enjoying the beautiful scenery and supporting our fight to beat meningitis in the UK within a generation.
Sadly, meningitis and septicaemia continue to affect thousands of people in the UK and kill more under-5s than any other infectious disease. Help us to fund research to eradicate this devastating disease, raise lifesaving awareness and support those affected.
