Contact a Family is a UK-based registered charity for families with disabled children offering support, advice and information regardless of the child's medical condition or situation. As well as supporting families the charity supports those who assist the families, including medical and educational professionals, local government workers and health workers. The charity also campaigns on behalf of disabled children's families in the UK.
Formed in 1979 as a small local project in the London Borough of Wandsworth the charity now has a presence in each of the four UK countries and employs over a hundred staff. It claims to directly help hundreds of thousands of families each year and is one of the main charities in the UK for carers and disabled people's families.
The name of the charity comes from one of its services whereby families are put in touch with others affected by the same or similar medical conditions. This in turn has led to the formation of many parent-led support groups some of which have themselves become registered charities. In recent years this service was extended to the World Wide Web. Another major work of the charity is the production of - often definitive - medical texts for many medical conditions. These are published in the Contact a Family Directory in book, CD-Rom and on the Internet.
The charity is a founding member of the Every Disabled Child Matters campaign.
Famous quotes containing the words contact and/or family:
“... it is nearly impossible to understand those who are beyond our sight, who are not explained to us by ties of birth or the contact of the flesh.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)
“It seems to me that upbringings have themes. The parents set the theme, either explicitly or implicitly, and the children pick it up, sometimes accurately and sometimes not so accurately.... The theme may be “Our family has a distinguished heritage that you must live up to” or “No matter what happens, we are fortunate to be together in this lovely corner of the earth” or “We have worked hard so that you can have the opportunities we didn’t have.””
—Calvin Trillin (20th century)