The Family Support Service was in touch with over 1,000 (1,000) families during the year.
Our London offices also offer face-to-face support and dealt with around 8,000 (7,500) enquiries during the year.

Workshops, meetings and social events

8,000 families (10,000 in 2005/6)

During the year, our staff organised 151 workshops attended by 2,449 parents (163 attended by 2,493 in 2005/6).
Our staff and volunteers also gave talks at 471 meetings attended by 9,788 parents and professionals (354 attended by 20,801 in 2005/6).
In addition, we organised 214 social trips involving 5,587 families (196 involving 3,618 in 2005/6).

Enquiries

10,000 families (10,000 in 2005/6)

The helpline enquiries cover all enquiries logged at City Road, the nation and region offices and by volunteer parent representatives and familiy workers.
Year on year the number of enquiries grew by 2% to 18,221 (17,942) of which 10,342 were from UK families (10,063).

Publications

40,000 families (30,000 in 2005/6)
We distributed 53,000 copies of our parent factsheets (51,500) and 45,000 guides for parents. Some parents asked for two or more of our publications on different topics so we estimate that at least 40,000 families obtained our publications during the year.

Websites

348,000 families (273,000 in 2005/6)

Our two websites attracted over 2.5m visitors during the year to 31st March 2007, however not all visitors are from the UK or UK families.
Our linking website www.makingcontact.org recorded 880,635 visitors during the year but the majority of them are likely to have also visited the main website which attracted 1,655,428 visitors (1,738,482) in the year.
A snapshot analysis of 2,400 visitors to the main website on 28/03/07 showed that 44.3% of visitors were from overseas
A survey of 2,012 UK visitors between October and December 2006 showed that 45.3% of visitors were parents or other family members of a child with a disability.
They had an average visitor frequency of 1.2 visits each over the year.
We can therefore calculate that our websites reached at least 348,000 unique UK families during the year.

Total

There will inevitably be some double counting within those figures - for example a family may have visited our website, then phoned our helpline and been sent a publication. The survey on our website of 2,012 UK visitors between October and December 2006 asked if they had used any of our other services and 60% of the UK parents and family members said they were first-time users of the website and had not previously used any of our other services. We therefore think it's fair to assume that we reached at least 275,000 families (275,000), which means that we are in contact with over a third of all the 770,000 families with disabled children in the UK each and every year.

In addition

In addition to this total, thousands of parents also benefit from our support indirectly:

We campaign for better services for disabled children throughout the UK. Despite our relatively small size, we are now widely recognised in government, and increasingly in the media, as a powerful and effective voice for parents.
We are at the centre of a network of 1,000 local parents' groups and 300 UK support groups for specific health conditions. We help establish new groups and develop existing ones.

Registered Charity No. 284912. Charity registered in Scotland No. SC039169
Company limited by guarantee, registered in England and Wales No. 1633333.
HM Revenue & Customs charity tax reference No. XN54769. VAT Reg. No. GB 749 3846 82