The Elizabeth Foundation

Please visit our "Magic Moments" pages for some of our memories of Jane, dearly loved friend and colleague.

Please join families and staff from our Bradford, West Yorkshire Centre for this year's Funday Sunday! A team of parents have worked incredibly hard again to plan this event, so please show your support by bringing your family and friends to Lister Park on Sunday 30 May from 12-4pm. There will be music, games and stalls!

We also need extra help on the day for all sorts of tasks like helping to set up or take down stalls, selling raffle tickets, and generally helping to make the day a success. If you can help, please contact Shirley, Sally or Alison at our Hampshire Centre 023 9237 2735 and we will put you in touch with a local Parent from the organising team. Thank you!

Important Notice - Raffle - we are also holding a Raffle as part of the Funday celebrations, with lots of great prizes. However, we have had to change the date on which the Raffle will be drawn; this will now be on Thursday 10 June and NOT 4 June as stated on the tickets and earlier publicity material.

Have a browse through our latest edition of 'In the News' and see where The Elizabeth Foundation has been featured in the press recently

In early December 2009, our Hampshire Centre was visited by Ofsted for an inspection. These visits take place unannounced, every 2-4 years. We were thrilled to learn that Ofsted gave us top marks in every single category - we are officially Outstanding! This means we are allowed to use a special logo, so watch out for it in our newsletters. If you would like to read the full report, it can be found at the Ofsted website .

Ofsted said "The centre provides a truly unique service.....It is their ability to support both the children and their families and produce such excellent outcomes for children that is the key to their outstanding practice."

For all the very latest news from The Elizabeth Foundation, why not take a look at our newsletter for both sites, Listen! Hampshire Spring 2010 and Listen! Yorkshire Spring 2010 . We think it looks great - but please tell us what you think. Send any comments about the newsletter or the stories featured, to Alison Robinson.

Following recent fantastic campaigning efforts by parents of deaf children attending The Elizabeth Foundation in Bradford, our Trustees have put together a plan to try to stay open until April 2010. This is specifically to allow time for discussions with potential local statutory funders and commissioners to take place, and hopefully to identify funding for the 2010/2011 fiscal year. At this time we do not have enough money available or promised to be able to guarantee staying open until then, but we are all going to try our hardest! We have been helped by our partners at Bradford Hospitals Trust, and in particular the Hospital CEO Miles Scott, who has committed to letting The Elizabeth Foundation use Prospect Cottage (our well-loved Family Centre in Bradford) rent-free until April.

It goes without saying that staff and families in Bradford are delighted by this news, and determined to make the most of this opportunity to establish a more secure future by continuing with discussions, meetings and negotiations with local statutory bodies. We are tremendously grateful to local MPs who are helping us too, such as Marsha Singh MP who has raised an Early Day Motion (number 1565) at the House of Commons to raise awareness about the threat our work in Yorkshire is under.

The Elizabeth Foundation in Bradford was thrilled to receive a £2000 donation and a promise of ongoing support from the Safeguarding Children e-Academy. SCe-A, one of the UK's leading providers of flexible e-learning Child Protection courses, donates a sizable percentage of its turnover every year to deserving charities across the UK. Its 51 members, mostly comprised of Local Safeguarding Children Boards, were asked where the money should go to and along with several other organisations the Elizabeth Foundation was singled out.

Read more about SCe-A and The Elizabeth Foundation at the SCe-A website

Margaret Southern was delighted to welcome representatives from SCe-A recently, and said that "The current economic climate has hit us hard with levels of donations dropping and local business being reluctant to support us and so we are delighted with the Safeguarding Children
e-Academy’s kind gift". Staff and children at The Elizabeth Foundation in Bradford hope that SCe-A's support will be the start of further commitments from local organisations and statutory partners to help secure the Centre's future.

Terry Rooney MP is backing The Elizabeth Foundation's applications to The Bradford City Council and local Primary Care Trusts for sustainable funding to keep our charitable services to pre school Deaf children and their families open at Prospect Cottage in the grounds of Bradford Royal Infirmary. He came to discuss further ways of helping, with parents of children attending our Centre. He began by drawing the winning ticket from our Funday Sunday Raffle which is for a Luxury Weekend Holiday Cottage Break. We hope the raffle will raise around £1500 which will go towards the money raised by The Friends of The Elizabeth Foundation to support the continuing work of the Foundation in Bradford. "This service is so needed by the families of deaf children in Bradford" says Terry Rooney. "The Friends and families have raised almost £20,000 in less than two months to demonstrate their strength of feeling and support especially in these difficult financial times. Parents are now turning to the local authorities to ask for some of the £340m that is being given to local authorities and Primary care Trusts to support disabled children, through joint national initiatives with Health and Education such as the "Healthy Lives Brighter Futures" initiative which is all about the importance of early intervention and developing partnerships with parents, which is what The Elizabeth Foundation has been doing in Bradford for ten years and will hopefully continue to do so. " If readers would like to help please write to their local councillor asking them to support our applications too. If you would like to donate some money to The Elizabeth Foundation's Yorkshire Centre please go to our Justgiving page featuring Prospect Cottage or contact Margaret Southern at The Elizabeth Foundation, 27 Smith Lane, Bradford, BD9 5HL and margaret.southern@elizabeth-foundation.org

Winner of the luxury weekend cottage break at Red House Farm Cottages, was Iftaz Hussain.

...and lots of other lovely prizes! Thank you to everyone who supported the Funday.

Rugby star Lawrence Dallaglio has made a donation to help tackle deafness in Portsmouth. Lawrence was in town on Thursday as director of motivation of The Listening Company, based on Isambard Brunel Road and he handed over a cheque for £5,000 for the Elizabeth Foundation's Raise the Roof project.

The hand-over launched the company's Decade Trust, which will see employees encouraged to raise as much money as possible for foundation, which supports pre-school children with hearing loss and their families.

Fundraising manager Alison Robinson said: 'He was lovely. One girl, a four-year-old called Katy Scanes, brought him a t-shirt to sign and he put a wonderful message on it, which just read "Katy, Follow your dreams", which is exactly what we are letting the youngsters know'

'We knew the company's staff had been doing things like quiz nights so we expected maybe there'd be £1,000 so we were flabbergasted! It's an amazing amount of money.'

Rugby's Lawrence Dallaglio with Elizabeth Foundation pre-school children in Portsmouth.

This article about an Elizabeth Foundation family in Yorkshire, appeared this week in the "Halifax Courier":

Since the announcement of the planned closure of our Bradford Centre at Prospect Cottage, families and friends have mobilised to raise funds for The Elizabeth Foundation in West Yorkshire. Please support their efforts by joining the "Funday Sunday" at Lister Park, Bradford on Sunday May 10th from 12-4pm. News of the planned closure has been widely reported in the Yorkshire press and we know that there is a huge desire for The Elizabeth Foundation to find a way to stay open or continue providing services in Bradford.

Both these Justgiving pages will automotically process your online donation direct to The Elizabeth Foundation, for our Bradford fundraising - Thank You!

The Elizabeth Foundation is a member of "Remember a Charity", a group that promotes giving to charities in your Will. We are delighted that the latest RaC media campaign has given us the opportunity to be featured on BBC One's The Politics Show on Sunday 26th April at 3pm. Please join us then to see the live broadcast from The Elizabeth Foundation in Hampshire which will be the programme's South Region feature for the day (at approximately 3.30pm). We will be joined by Sarah McCarthy-Fry MP and other guests. More details about ways to view the show are via Sky, or the BBC South segment is available 24 hours later on BBC iplayer or online at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/politics_show/default.stm

We are very sad to announce that for financial reasons we are having to plan the closure of our Bradford Centre at the end of term on 10 July this year. Our team in Bradford have worked with dedication and commitment to help dozens of wonderful families and children, but we cannot afford to stay open. Since we announced the news to families and the public, we have received some heartwarming and heartbreaking message of support and thanks, which we would like to share here on our website to acknowledge with gratitude the work of our Bradford teachers and nursery staff.

Details and a booking form are now available for our 2009 fundraising Golf Day and Dinner. Get the date in your diary and the booking form back to Alison!

Please print and complete the form, and send it to Alison Robinson at The Elizabeth Foundation.

The main construction phase of building work was completed in February and our lovely new Family Centre looks stunning! We are working hard to be fully operational after the Easter Holidays, and making plans for all the exciting new phases of development inside. Projects on the drawing board incude:

See our Raise The Roof Appeal pages for more information about how to help, and some photographs! We will be posting more photos soon, so please return again. Our grateful thanks go to:

.....and all our specialist contractors and advisors including: Peter Davies (Structural Engineer), Ellis Electrical Ltd, Opal Telecom Ltd, The Alarming Company, Solent Sound and Fire Systems Ltd, Sound Advice (Acoustics), Robert Blair Raines (Mechanical Consultant).

Building work has started! Raise the Roof project begins at The Elizabeth Foundation, Cosham

On a lovely sunny day in May, we gathered to celebrate the start of the Raise the Roof building project and the signature of our contract with Amiri Construction Ltd. Watch out for coverage on the local press!

Kevin Lendon (Amiri), Alasdair Reid (Davis Langdon), Sally Moger (The Elizabeth Foundation), Roger Boyce (Architect), Heidi Ormsby (Chair, The Elizabeth Foundation), Shirley Metherell (Founder & CEO, The Elizabeth Foundation.

The children joined in too! Spot the real builders...

Amiri Construction site team, and helpers from The Elizabeth Foundation!

Watch this space for more news and pictures as building progresses...

OUR "RAISE THE ROOF" APPEAL IS LAUNCHED!

At our Beethoven Ball on 10 November, CEO and Founder Shirley Metherell and her husband Dave were delighted to announce the launch of a major Fundraising Appeal called "Raise the Roof!".

The Appeal is needed to finance construction work to double the size of our original Family Centre building at Cosham, Hampshire. Our supporters will remember that the Family Centre was lovingly "self built" by the Metherells and other founder-families, nearly 25 years' ago. It has served us so well, and helped us to help hundreds of families with young deaf children over the years. Now we need to grow! We will put a whole new top storey on the building, giving us the opportunity to modernise and expand as well as allowing us longer term to establish the new baby unit right next door to the Newborn Hearing Screening facility where it belongs. We will also be able to create a much-needed resource centre for our Home Learning Programme, which is rapidly gaining new enrolments following introduction of our web-based enrolment form.

Please take a look at our first Appeal Brochure and also details of our "Buy a Brick" Campaign in support of our Appeal - Buy a Brick for £10 or more, and place an entry in our commemorative "Roll of Honour Book".

We will be putting more news about this on the website soon, but if you can't wait (we hope you can't), then please contact Alison Robinson or Sally Moger, or call us on 023 9237 2735.

Please come back again soon for more news about "Raise the Roof!".

"OPTIMISM AT THE ELIZABETH FOUNDATION" - We are delighted to be featured on that happy new website www.optimistworld.com where you can find all the chirpiest news about the nicest people. Why not visit and take a moment to smile?

CIVIC AWARD

Portsmouth City Council presented a Civic Award to our Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Shirley Metherell, during this year's Mayor Making Ceremony. The award was "in recognition of her outstanding achievement in creating The Elizabeth Foundation and the support which it has provided to babies and young children who are deaf or hard of hearing, and their families". Shirley said she felt really honoured to receive this from her home city.

WOODLAND TRAIL OFFICIAL OPENING

We were delighted to welcome Admiral Sir Jonathon Band, the First Sea Lord, to The Elizabeth Foundation in February. After a tour around the Family Centre and the Hearing Clinic, he and his wife Sarah officially opened our Woodland Walk area by cutting the ribbon at the entrance (pictured), and leading the way down the new pathway. Our pre-schooler children followed closely behind, clutching their green and purple Elizabeth Foundation balloons.

IMPACT AWARDS

The Elizabeth Foundation was Highly Commended in the 2006 Impact Awards announced last year, reaching the top 25 of over 300 UK-wide entrants in this annual, prestigious award scheme run by Glaxosmithkline in partnership with The Kings Fund. The awards ceremony was held at the National Gallery, London, and we were delighted to be recognised as one of the leading "Impact" groups in the country making a real difference to peoples lives.