Chanctonbury Community Playscheme: Appeal for Support

My name is Keith Woodcock and I am a recently retired teacher who after helping for over 30 years has taken on the role as Organiser of CCPS – The Chanctonbury Community Playscheme. CCPS has been existence some 32 years and was founded by a group of mothers of ‘Children with Mental and Physical Disabilities’ who got together to provide desperately needed respite care for their children and others like them in the school holidays.

As highlighted in a recent BBC programme, the plight of children with disabilities and their carers is an area of grave concern within the community and the provision for these children’s needs is a constant battle with the authorities. Issues like occasional respite care, transport and even the provision of enough ‘nappies’ are all on the day-to-day agenda for all our parents with children with disabilities ranging from Aspergers Syndrome to Cerebral Palsy, Dons Syndrome to Autism.

Our role at CCPS is to provide some respite care between 10 am to 4 pm each day for 4 weeks during the summer holidays, when their Special Schools are closed. We do this by recruiting a lot of extraordinary young teenagers [160+ in number] from local schools and colleges to come and help us entertain and care for some 75 disabled children each day. They play with them, take them on trips, feed them and even cope with their medical needs under the direction of our Nurse. Many of these able bodied youngsters [14 to 18yrs] have a life changing experience when working with our children. We also have a group of older volunteer Team Leaders who are very experienced being Nurses, Teachers, Policemen, Students and even 2 from the Royal Navy. Add to this a team of Minibus Drivers because we lay on transport [9 minibuses] to and from the playscheme each day.

Then there is the CCPS Committee of 16 Adult volunteers who run the playscheme year on year and you can see it takes an almighty team effort to run CCPS for just 4 weeks every summer! We do it gladly – it is our way of giving something back to our local community and what is more important helping lots of families who would be devastated if CCPS was not around to help them each summer.

What we do lack however and it is a constant battle every year, is adequate funds to ensure that we can carry on the playscheme every summer. We have had to introduce a small charge per week and the parents, many of whom are in the low income groups and have to struggle to get funding just for part of the 4 weeks from Social Services, do find it increasingly difficult to find even this small amount of money so we do subsidise a lot of our children.  Our transport bill alone in 2009 was nearly £16,000, since we have to fuel the 9 buses we hire - even West Sussex County Council charged us some £2,000 plus for the use of just 2 Wheel Chair Minibuses. We  have to pay West Sussex CC for the 2 venues we use.

Rydon School at Storrington and Oakgrove College at Durrington, some £2,750 to £3,000 each for 2 weeks.

In all it costs us around £50,000 to run CCPS each year, a not inconsiderable sum to find each year.. ....we are always in need of money to ensure that our Playscheme can continue year on year!!

We do a lot of fund raising ourselves through Christmas Fairs, Race Nights, Sponsored Events and receive many small donations but we increasingly find ourselves with an annual shortfall and our funds are dwindling fast. We do not want to let these children or their families down so please if there is any way you or your organisation could help us we would be extremely grateful. We pride ourselves in being a local Charity catering for local needs in the southern part of West Sussex and include children from nearly every Parish, certainly south of the Downs. [We now have an independent offshoot in Horsham run by an ex Co-ordinator from CCPS].

You can find out more about us and our work here at CCPS from our web site at www.ccps-sussex.org.uk  or by contacting me via kieth.woodcock@sky.com or on 01903 741246 / 01903 744375 or at 45, School Hill, Storrington, West Sussex RH20 4NA. [Charity Number 284353]

Please, please help us to help our very special children. Thank you, Keith Woodcock.

Return To News Page