We tell ourselves that summer is meant to be all about making memories with the kids but that’s not the reality for so many. Rising costs are just part of it. When mental health problems mean you can’t leave the house, even cheap and cheerful family days out can feel impossibly out of reach.
The Family Action Summer Fund is about the little things that make a big difference, giving our support teams the ability to make the impossible possible.
Jen runs our Perinatal Support Service in South Tees – she told us what the Summer Fund meant for the families they support.
The parents we support often have anxiety or depression. That’s why they’re with us – and we’d already asked them to step out of their comfort zone by even making the trip
Getting around in an unfamiliar place
Saltburn by the Sea is a little affluent town on the Yorkshire coast that many people wouldn’t know to go to, which is a shame because it’s quite a nice town. It’s very picturesque, so we wanted to make it more accessible for the people we work with and just have a brilliant day there.
A lot of the families we support weren’t born in England and are seeking asylum, so they wouldn’t have known how to get to Saltburn, even if they’d known about it. Our service covers a large area, and we invited families we support from Middlesbrough and Redcar & Cleveland. It was difficult to organise transport, so we used some of the money from summer fund to pay for 12 train tickets, and we hired two large beach huts so people had somewhere to make a hot drink and breastfeed.
There were people who’d never had fish and chips before, and there were some who said they didn’t fancy it…and then changed their minds when they got there!
Enjoying time together without overwhelm
We had a loose structure of a lot of low-level activities that wouldn’t overwhelm and just tried to go with the flow really.
We organised rock painting and a few activities on the beach when the tide went out and we arranged to have fish and chips from a gorgeous, award-winning place on the bottom prom. There were people who’d never had fish and chips before, and there were some who said they didn’t fancy it…and then changed their minds when they got there! We didn’t realise we had ordered 25 boxes of chips…they had to put them in a bin liner for us!
Mainly we just got together and had a good time. It was an opportunity to make a gorgeous memory, and many of the mums later spoke about the friendships they’d formed on the day.
What might look like a simple day trip had an outsize impact on those who made the journey.
Summer can be an isolating and lonely time, it can seem like everyone else is doing outdoor activities together, while some families feel stuck at home. Your donation can help families like those supported by South Tees Perinatal Service to overcome the challenges they face.
