National Children's Home
NCH is the children's charity
of the Methodist church. On 14 July
2002, we celebrated 133 years of helping the children who need it the
most.
Adoption is the theme for this
year's NCH Sunday. For well over a
century, we have been finding families for vulnerable children.
Our founder, Revd Thomas Bowman Stephenson initiated a radical shift in
the approach to child welfare in the late 19th century.
He succeeded in setting up small family-type homes with half a dozen
children in the care of a housemother and housefather.
He also matched children who could no longer live with their birth
parents with individual families. When
the first adoption legislation was passed in 1926, we had by then already placed
some 1,000 children with families and became the first approved Adoption Agency.
NCH has continued to be at the
forefront of pioneering adoption for the most vulnerable children.
Most of the children adopted through NCH today have already experienced
considerable damage to their young lives through abuse, neglect, disability or
illness. We find families for
children of a range of ages with challenging backgrounds and complex needs.
There are now more than 55,000
children in care - and only about 4% of them are adopted each year.
The effect of a childhood in care is significant for that child's future,
with fewer opportunities in life and more obstacles to overcome.
We need to find more families who can offer a child a loving home, a
sense of healing for their past and opportunity for their future.
Thousands of children have been
adopted through NCH during the last 110 years, many of them through Methodist
families. The church, as a whole,
as well as countless individuals have supported and invested in this work
through their generous giving over the years.
This year we need to raise £200,000 to continue to find families for
vulnerable children and to be able to offer ongoing support to them and their
parents.
The NCH Covenant
Every
child has the right to live, to be safe and to be loved.
Every young person has the right to be housed, to have enough money to
live in dignity and to have enough support for the future.
Every young person has the right to justice, to realise their potential
and to be given the space to become independent.
In an often cruel and imperfect world, we uphold the work of NCH with
children and young people in danger, in need and at risk.
We support the growth of this work and the pursuit of these rights for
the young, the discounted and the vulnerable.
We make this covenant with NCH for the sake of all God's children.
Amen.
Specially prepared worship
material for NCH Sunday and details of your local NCH contact are available from
the Support Helpline on 0845 762 6579
For more information on
adoption, ring the national enquiry line: Adoption
NCH 0845 355 5533
Website:
www.nch.org.uk
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