There are more than half a million autistic people living in the UK, an invisible and misunderstood disability. 60,000 live in the West Midlands.

Autism West Midlands are the leading charity in the area for people on the autism spectrum. They use their expertise to enrich the lives of autistic people and those who love and care for them. Their passionate, expert staff and volunteers work across all age groups and abilities, providing direct support.

They support autistic people to live as independently as possible, in residential care, or in their own or the family home

• they provide activities and events and support for families, and an information helpline
• they help autistic people to find and keep a job
• they offer training for parents of children on the autism spectrum, and the professionals who help them ….and much more!

Their Vision

A world where autistic people are universally understood and accepted as equal citizens.

Their Mission

To provide specialist support.

Duchenne UK is a lean, ambitious and highly focused charity with a clear vision: to fund and accelerate treatments and a cure for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD), and to do so in a decade.

Duchenne UK have an innovative approach to funding. Not only do they fund basic research, but they fund clinical trials. They fund the doctors and nurses in the UK to deliver those trials: and they look at where ever possible, they can accelerate research and work with industry and regulators to get drugs approved.

Llamau believes that no young person or vulnerable woman should ever have to experience homelessness. Their mission is to eradicate homelessness for young people and vulnerable women. But for thousands of the most vulnerable people in Wales, homelessness is a frightening reality.

30 years ago Llamau was founded to provide homeless teenagers with a safe place to stay. Since then, they have supported over 67,000 young people, women and their children who are either homeless or facing homelessness.

Rainbow Trust Children’s Charity supports families who have a child aged 0-18 years with a life-threatening or terminal illness.

Why?

There are an estimated 86,625 children in England with life-limiting or life-threatening conditions. This number has trebled over the last 17 years and is rising. Thousands of families have to face the very real possibility that their child may die and struggle to cope on a day to day basis. The Rainbow Trust Family Support Workers provide a lifeline to these families and children.

How?

When a child has a serious illness, family life is turned upside down and time becomes more precious than ever. Rainbow Trust pairs each family with an expert Family Support Worker who enables them to make the most of time together, giving them practical and emotional support, whenever they need it, for as long as is needed.

The Rainbow Trust supports the whole family including parents, carers, the unwell child, brothers, sisters and grandparents. Support is hugely varied and depends on the needs of the family. It can include:

• listening to a family’s fears and anxieties
• helping to explain illnesses, diagnoses and treatments
• keeping a seriously ill child company during hospital stays
• driving families to medical appointments to help save time and money
• organising fun activities to help sick children, their brothers and sisters
  support through bereavement and grief.

St Ann’s Hospice provides excellent care and support to people living with or affected by life-limiting illnesses in the Greater Manchester area.  Supporting individuals from across Greater Manchester from three sites, they also have dedicated ‘Hospice@Home’ teams caring for people in the place they call home. Only a third of St Ann’s funding comes from the NHS and they need to raise £20,000 every day to keep their doors open.

St Ann’s believes that everyone deserves to have the best quality of life possible. They aim to meet the unique physical, emotional, social and spiritual needs of those with life-limiting illnesses, and help maintain their dignity. They are not just focused on the patients either, they recognise that it’s also a difficult time for relatives, carers and friends and they provide support for them, too.

All support and services St Ann’s provide are free of charge.

SERV Wessex is a registered charity (No. 1156383) that provides a free out of hours transportation service for NHS Hospitals in the Hampshire, Dorset and South Wiltshire areas, 365 days per year, between 19:00 and 06:00 weekday evenings and 24hrs a day at weekends and on public holidays.

SERV Wessex transports blood products and other urgent consignments allowing hospitals to divert financial and staff resources elsewhere. These include:

• Blood for transfusion, platelets or other blood products which must be supplied to us in the appropriate insulated packaging
• Blood, urine or other tissue samples for analysis by pathology and microbiology laboratories
• Human Milk
• X-rays, scans and CDs
• Patient notes
• Any other medical items or small pieces of medical equipment

All of their members are volunteers and cover all fuel and servicing costs for their vehicles themselves.

The service is run entirely on donations, SERV Wessex does not receive any funding apart from charitable donations.

SERV Wessex is always looking for more volunteers, riders, drivers, controllers and fundraisers.

If you are interested in getting involved as a rider/driver/controller, helping out with events or becoming a sponsor, please contact secretary@servwessex.org.uk.

Lives would be lost without the continued support given to SERV Wessex.

Pancreatic Cancer UK is a registered charity that aims to diagnose and treat pancreatic cancer patients.

The charity want to make sure that everyone affected by it gets all the help they need by:

• providing expert, personalised support and information via their support line and through their range of publications;
• funding innovative research to find the breakthroughs that will change how the charity understands, diagnoses and treats pancreatic cancer; and
• campaigning for change; for better care, treatment and research, and for pancreatic cancer to have the recognition it needs.

Somerset Accident Voluntary Emergency Service (SAVES) is a registered charity that provides a network of doctors to support the ambulance service in Somerset. The doctors have specialised training in the emergency management of trauma and medical conditions outside hospital. They respond to incidents at the request of ambulance control in their own cars, which are equipped with blue lights and sirens for those with ambulance approved driver training (and green lights for those who have not).

Most of their work is in helping casualties of road traffic collisions, especially those who are trapped and seriously injured. They are also called to give immediate medical care to people who have become critically ill through medical problems or trauma.

The doctors are available on-call 24 hours a day, seven days a week and perform this role in addition to their “day jobs” which are predominantly in General Practice or Accident and Emergency. In addition to organising and supporting these doctors, SAVES provides specialist equipment and training for this highly specialised role.

SAVES is one of a network of immediate care schemes across the UK which operate under the umbrella of the national organisation BASICS (The British Association for Immediate Care). The Scheme meets BASICS criteria for quality and has been accredited by BASICS. In March 2010 SAVES became more closely linked with the other schemes serving the South West Peninsula in a federation of the four schemes known as “BASICS South West”.