The History Behind Forget-Me-Notts
Operation Orphan has had Forget-Me-Notts under it’s wing for TEN years now but that isn’t where it all started…
A lady called Anthea Wainwright started the charity Forget-Me-Notts in September 2006 and the aim was to give chocolates at Easter and Christmas to young people who are either being looked after in the care system or who are in need. They also gave out packets of Forget-Me-Not seeds!
The original FMN logo
The charity made the local news a few times, celebrating their successes with the chocolate collections. They managed to collect and distribute 400-500 gifts each season.
One child who received a chocolate gift was so grateful to know that they had not been forgotten and that message stayed with them until, when they were old enough, they wanted to give back and so spent a number of years volunteering and fundraising for Operation Orphan and Forget-Me-Notts.
Due to ill health, Andrea could not carry on with the charity and approached Brad and Cyrilyn to see if Operation Orphan would like to take it under its wing and then in 2013/14 we held our first collections.
Now, 10 years on, we continue to receive requests submitted by local care providers and our last distributions were 3770 Selection Boxes and 3017 Easter Eggs. As well as many individual volunteers, we now have lots of companies, groups and schools supporting this strand of FMN and they regularly get involved with collecting and wrapping these gifts.
This Christmas (2023), 4500 selection boxes have been requested and the enormity of this shows how many children are living in and around the care system in our local area.
In 2015, we became aware of a huge need in the local area because families were struggling to provide essential items for their children. We got in touch with a few social workers who confirmed the need and the second strand of FMN was born! Word of this soon spread amongst the social care community and we developed the project so that social workers could complete a Referral Form, requesting what items they think would benefit the families and help them to create safer environments for the children to live in.
Our very first Referral was received in 2016 (for clothing) and our 7th, in 2017, was the first bed request.
It soon became apparent that bed poverty was a huge issue and we decided to tackle that by making beds our priority. Barnardo’s published a report in September 2023 which looked into how the cost-of-living crisis is exacerbating child poverty across their services. Polling commissioned by Barnardo’s and conducted by YouGov found there are over 1 million families where parents have given up their own beds so their child had somewhere to sleep in the last 12 months. Their polling of children aged 8–17, shows that 11% of children have had to share a bed or sleep on the floor in the last 12 months, an estimated 894,000 children in the UK.
As well as our Forget-Me-Notts team here in Nottingham, we also now have a hub in Lancashire which started operating in 2020.
Through the Referral strand of Forget-Me-Notts from 2016 until now (November 2023), and with the help and support of many individuals, schools and businesses, we have…
👉 Delivered and installed over 1200 beds
👉 Helped 2703 children
This year alone we have provided over 2000 items - ranging from soft toys and safety gates to blankets and bunk beds!
Thank you to everyone who helps make this possible - as a team, we are working together to improve the lives of vulnerable children 💕
Heather