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Members provide basic kitchen materials for young people leaving care etc and setting up their first homes. Start Up is based in three areas - Swansea, Brecon and Llandrindod. The MU undertakes this work by liasing with the Swansea Bay project, The Princes Trust and Social Services.
 ‘I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your recent donation of starter packs (pictured) in respect of the young people with whom we work. I want to assure you that these donations are very much appreciated by all staff working here at the BAYS Project and will of course be put to good use.I hope that you will continue to support us in our work’.
- Children’s Services Manager, Barnados
Clothes for the baby unit
Members knit blankets and small items of clothing suitable for tiny sick and premature babies. The older and housebound members are particularly good at doing this.
Please accept our thanks for the knitted garments you so kindly donated for our babies, which will be put to good use.
Donations like yours help to improve the vital service we offer to small or ill babies.
- Clinical Nurse Specialist, Neonates, Singleton Hospital, Swansea
Holidays for families in need
Members raise funds for AWAY FROM IT ALL (AFIA), providing a week away for families who are in need of a holiday because of personal circumstances. Families may be parents and children, lone parents. Sometimes the children are sick or disabled children.
The holidays are usually at seaside caravan parks like Porthcawl or Tenby but one holiday was provided for a wheel chair bound child on a specially adapted canal boat.
 On returning from the holiday, the reaction from the family was very positive.
I was told the children;thoroughly enjoyed the change of environment and it gave the whole family a much needed break which would not otherwise been possible.
Family Centre Manager
Swansea & Brecon Diocesan Board for Social Responsibility
Our first holiday this year was for a little family referred to us by Brecon Women’s Aid, and we have never had such praise!
They had a wonderful time and were full of praises for the excellent caravan, food parcel and site amenities….. The children never stopped talking about the beach, sand castles and paddling in the sea. We were told that the holiday week away has made a real difference to the family who would not have been able to afford such luxury, and who appreciated the chance to enjoy themselves away from all the worries and troubles they are experiencing at home.
Away Days are also organised. For example, a coach trip for Swansea families to St Fagan’s Museum of Welsh Life, near Cardiff and one from Brecon to Bristol Zoo. The MU provides the coach and picnic lunch and families pay the rest.
Swansea Kids In Prison (Skip)
50+ volunteers, mostly MU Members, man a Play Area in Swansea Prison. This is the largest number of volunteers running a Prison Play Area in the whole of the UK.
Duties consist of an afternoon of 3 hours, every four or five weeks. There are 2 hour visits in this session. The ladies work in pairs playing with the children, doing basic craft work or just drawing and colouring and talking or listening.
Children are encouraged to go back to the visits area to see their family. Many are happy just to play. It must be frightening for a child to visit Prison and the volunteers try to make this less traumatic.
Mothers appreciate the time they have with their partners, without the children, to discuss business and any problems. The Prison Officers say that this also makes the Prisoners happier.
The MU supplies some of the equipment and toys in the Play Area. Also it funds two play workers, usually student teachers to do activities during visiting time over the Christmas and New Year period.
I found my time at the play-area to be a very rewarding experience.
Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to experience, what is really, a different way of life. I have certainly changed my opinion of the way I envisaged a prison to be and I feel I am a better person because of my time spent in the play-area.
Student Play worker
As some children have more visits than others, we soon bonded with the children and the joy they felt at seeing a friendly face, in what can be a very alien environment, soon became clear. The time we spent in the play-area. although short, was an invaluable experience and enjoyable in as many ways as it was educational.
We are extremely grateful for the opportunity (and the welcome) we received and many of us look forward to returning, to offer our services again.
Student Play worker
Safe Houses
Many members support women and children in the various Safe Houses, throughout the diocese. They provide any items that will help Mums and children who often leave their homes, hurriedly, with nothing.
One MU Branch, in Swansea, keeps a basket at the back of the Church, where all church members donate toiletries, sheets, underwear, towels. The basket is never empty!
Thank you to all at Mothers’ Union for the kind donation of toiletries for the women who come into our refuge.
The Staff, Lliw Valley Women’s Aid
Child Safety in the Home
This project is being undertaken in partnership with the Diocesan Board of Social Responsibility. Members are being asked to support this project, by raising money to provide essential safety equipment for homes, where there are small or vulnerable children, living in financially challenged families. Items being provided will include stair gates, plug defenders and cooker guards.
The Mary Sumner Prayer
All this day, O Lord, let me touch as many lives as possible for thee; and every life I touch, do thou by thy Spirit quicken, whether by the word I speak, the prayer I breathe, or the life I live. Amen
Written in 1876 by Mothers' Union founder, Mary Sumner.
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