2023 Charity Award

His legacy has certainly lived on with the purchase of three holiday lodges: Ben’s Retreat, Ben’s Den and Ben’s Legacy. These holiday homes have helped to support over 250 families affected by cancer across the UK. This has been made possible through the generosity and support of many communities in helping to raise over £500,000. 

Our online support groups and events help people to connect with others who share their experiences. Trained volunteers give one-to-one support to help people cope with the most difficult parts of their journeys.

Babies born with a cleft often need special bottles and teats to feed, and CLAPA produces and provides these for free to hundreds of new families every year. Many babies born with a cleft are unable to create a vacuum with their mouth enabling them to suck. This causes parents considerable anxiety, as the baby may not take in enough nourishment to thrive properly. There are different designs of bottle and teat to suit individual babies, CLAPA is the only UK provider of some of these specialist bottles and teats, with one design made exclusively to our specification.

As these children grow up, our services for under-18s help them to build confidence and feel in control of their care. For adults born with a cleft, our Adult Services connect them to others with shared experiences and ensure they can access the care and support they need. We also work closely with the nine specialist NHS Cleft Teams in the UK and support people affected by cleft to get involved with research projects and other initiatives to improve care.

Our patients include people experiencing homelessness, families living in poverty, survivors of domestic abuse, people living with cancer, refugees, people overcoming addiction and fishing communities. In Yorkshire we have clinics in Bradford, Leeds, York, Harrogate, Whitby and Barnsley. However, the demand for our services is huge and with your support we could reach new locations and help more vulnerable people to smile again.

Our mobile dental units are fully equipped mobile dental surgeries on wheels. We offer our patients emergency pain relieving treatments, x-rays, scale and polish and restorative dental care. We know that our patients are on a journey and that dental care can play a key part in their chances of moving on to a new chapter in their lives. This could be their chances of progressing with drug and alcohol recovery programmes because they are no longer suffering the misery of untreated toothache, or their ability to seek housing, employment or other support services because they feel more confident in their appearance.

Our patients face many physical, emotional, mental and physical barriers to accessing care and by taking a service to locations where they feel supported and comfortable, we give them the best possible chance to access dental care – which really can change their lives.

These essential sessions, often described as a “lifeline” by service users, improve the lives and wellbeing of people living with dementia and other complex health needs. They also have a profoundly positive effect on their carers as well.

”Hearing my Dad know and say my name unprompted for the first time in three months is nothing short of a miracle…and this is all down to him attending a Lost Chord Session.”

Please consider voting for Lost Chord so that we can provide more vital sessions in South Yorkshire.

We also train Medical Alert Assistance Dogs to detect minute changes in an individual’s personal odour triggered by their disease and alert them to an impending medical event. This helps them manage complex, life-threatening medical conditions by avoiding injuries and hospitalisation and improves their quality of life.

Across Yorkshire we currently have 9 accredited partnerships, with 2 partnerships in training and due to be accredited soon, with a further 7 applicants who are at various stages of the process to see if they qualify to be partnered with one of our life saving Assistance Dogs. Each partnership costs us £29,000 so any gift that we are awarded would go towards changing someone’s life forever.

We are a small charity making a huge impact. Your support can help us to train dogs to help save the lives of people with complex illnesses.

Our clients can enjoy a fun packed day in our activity room and carry out lots of fun activities from baking to art as well as learning independent living skills. Some of our clients can also gain work experience in our café by working with our amazing team and learning new things that will aid them in gaining skills in the hospitality sector. Guided by our staff our clients can build confidence whilst at Riva which gives them the skills to use when they leave us or when they are out in public by themselves.

Combating social isolation is important for us and offering our day service that allows our clients to take part in lots of different activities gives them the chance to get out and try something new and different instead of being stuck in at home. They can meet other people, have a chat, visit the gym, go to the park as well as learning skills in cooking and money.

Our Project supports homeless and vulnerable people to build new lives with good physical and mental health, stable housing and ultimately, paid employment.

The Ehlers-Danlos Support UK is the only charity providing direct support for people who have any type of EDS. We work across the UK to support, advise and inform those living with EDS or HSD and the medical professionals working with them.

A donation from Sheffield Mutual would be used to help fund our regional support groups. Support groups are hugely important – giving people with EDS an opportunity to share tips, information around local services, and to support each other. Although we are a national charity, we have a strong presence in Yorkshire, with very active support groups in this area.

We supported 200 families in our first year and are hoping the support just as many, if not more, again this year. We propose to do this by allocating funding to specific areas of the UK. We hope that this will increase supporter engagement in each area, knowing that the money raised will support a family local to them, and will allow us to be more flexible in the types of activities we’re able to fund.

With a £5,000 grant from Sheffield Mutual, we would focus this support on families living within Yorkshire. We would work with local businesses and tourist attractions to build relationships and offer memory making experiences as locally as possible to the families we’re supporting, therefore also giving back to the local economy.

We currently rehome three to four hundred cats per year, but the cost of living crisis means that our services are in demand more than ever before and we are having to deal with an increasing number of abandoned cats and kittens. As well as our rehoming solutions we also provide education on cat ownership and cat health via our website and social media channels.

We are also committed to helping cat owners keep their beloved pets wherever possible. We do that by subsidising cat neutering, and by providing advice, help and financial support where appropriate. We also supply cat food to a local organisation who rescues and helps feral cats, and we are hoping to start our own cat food bank to help cat owners who are struggling financially.