This year thanks to a generous donation given to us from The Craig Charity for Children we have been able to organise several events for some of the families we support.
Each month we have our coffee and play meetings which enables families to come up to the farm for a time where the kids can play, and the parents can have a coffee whilst enjoying chatting with the other parents who are there. This regular meet up has been greatly beneficial to all those families involved. However, this year with the help of the grant from the Craig Charity for Children we were able to organise a few different day trips and activities in addition to this.
At Easter, we held a special event here at Crag House Farm. Around 18 children attended with their families and we did a range of activities from pony riding to cuddling the lambs. We had snacks and drinks in two of the summer houses in the conservation area and then did an Easter egg hunt. Everyone had a really fun day, the parents/guardians were absolutely delighted to see how happy the children were around the animals.
In August, we visited Puttstars Golf in Leeds with a group of 5 families where they enjoyed two rounds of crazy golf, then pizza and hot dogs for lunch. We were also able to bring families up to the farm to enjoy some of the child friendly activities that the Social Enterprise areas had arranged for the general public. These activities included, Story Time, Unicorn Day and a ‘Teddy Bears’ picnic! For all of these trips and activities, we have been able to cover all the costs, manage the travel and be around constantly to help out with the children, so the families can just come and enjoy without the worry of organising any of it.
For those families we support who can’t cope with lots of people, we organised some smaller trips out, with 1 or 2 families at a time. These involved a trip to the park or playground and some ice cream!
These activities and trips have been a lifeline to these families who are often isolated, struggling with many health problems and finding life tough.
The money we are given from Trusts and supporters to enable us to support people in this way really is such a blessing to the vulnerable folk we support.