What do you do?
We provide information, advice, support and linking to families with disabled children.
- Information is split between the topics covered in our parent guides, and detailed medical information in our Directory.
- Advice to individual parents is provided both locally and via our freephone helpline, (tel: 0808 808 3555)
- We also aim to link families on either an individual basis or via a support group.
- We provide developmental advice to new and existing support groups.
- We influence policy at a local and national level, raise awareness and campaign for a better deal for families.
How did the charity start?
Our work began in the London Borough of Wandsworth in early 1974, although Contact a Family did not become a registered charity until 1979.
It begin due to a realisation that there was:
- hardly any provision for the whole family. Services were for the disabled child alone, leaving parents and siblings isolated.
- hardly any cross-condition support. There were separate specialist services depending on the disabled child's condition, which often meant that children had to travel further from home again leading to isolation for the families.
- no 'neighbourhood' or 'community' service - everything was organised on a much larger Borough or Regional basis which also led to isolation.
How are you funded?
Most of our money comes from local and national government grants, from the Big Lottery Fund or from Charitable Trusts. However, nearly all this money is 'restricted' - we can only legally spend it on specific items of our work.
Only 18% of our income is 'unrestricted' giving us the ability to spend it on less glamorous, but vital, areas of work which we cannot obtain 'restricted' funding for. Our liquid reserves are only enough to fund our work for 8 weeks so we are constantly in need of donations.
Is Contact a Family a big charity?
In a 2004 charity survey, we were ranked 1,377th in a list of 3,000 UK charities in terms of income. However, we like to think we 'punch above our weight' and this has been said to us on many occasions. For instance, our website is one of the top 40 most visited UK charity sites and is probably the most visited site in the world offering information on rare disorders.
How much do you spend on fundraising?
Because only 19% of our income is 'unrestricted' we need to increase that amount. We are therefore recruiting individual direct debit donors via a door to door campaign. Although there are high initial costs in this form of fundraising, the long-term benefits will be worthwhile. The costs of the door to door fundraising campaign in 2006/7 were £271,335 and this was financed mainly by a bank loan facility of £250,000. Our underlying fundraising costs were £243,383, which represents 5.4% of expenditure.
If I gave you £10, what would you spend it on?
A one-off £10 donation is appreciated and, for example, could pay for a book for our reference library or enable us to print and send out 13 copies of our guide for parents 'When your child has additional needs' which can often be a lifeline for very isolated parents.
However, we always try to encourage UK taxpayers to Gift Aid donations, so the £10 would have a further £2.82 added to it from the government.
We also try to encourage people to make a regular donation as this enables us to plan further ahead and is more cost-effective for us to administer.
How else could my money be used?
- £5 a month with Gift Aid would enable us to print another 300 free factsheets for parents each year
- £10 a month with Gift Aid would enable a disabled child to attend one of our summer playschemes each year
- £15 a month with Gift Aid would enable ten parents to attend one of our regional workshops each year
- £2,000 would fully maintain a volunteer parent representative for an entire year
- £4,000 would pay for the production and distribution of one issue of our quarterly magazine for parents and groups.
You can help support disabled children and their families today by making a regular gift to Contact a Family or by making a secure donation online now
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