Sally, Senior Support and Advocacy Officer at the MPS Society, reflects on the significance and impact of our community events for families living a rare life. First and foremost, it is our aim to offer a variety of activities that are accessible to all our members, to create many precious memories and to build a supportive community that is here for you.
Life is difficult at the best of times for most these days, but it's particularly difficult when you are living and dealing with chronic health issues and disability. We know this all too well in our Advocacy Service as it’s a continuous grind of dealing with problems and concerns that our community face on a daily basis. Nothing is off the table in terms of subject matter, as we can support our members with guidance on anything from accessing health care, education, employment, disability benefits, aids and adaptions to homes. These are just some of the regular issues our community faces, usually with increased difficulty and disadvantage.
The MPS Society has taken a two-stringed approach to serving its community. The first is through support with all these issues, and the second, is by offering some balance to offset what can be a lot of bleakness. Our events are one way we do this.
By providing fun and exciting days out or even weekends and overnight stays, we give our community something to look forward to and to be a part of.
We serve the whole of the UK, so geographically this is a tough ask, but we try to spread out events so that as many of our community and their families as possible can attend. Most importantly, we realise that whilst our community has rare conditions in common, they can and do affect everyone from all walks of life.
Therefore, it is equally important to us that everyone has the opportunity to attend at least one event throughout the year regardless of financial status or how big or small their family is.
Our events are heavily discounted to counter these issues and we are always delighted to see these efforts pay off when we are fully booked very quickly after advertising the latest offering.
Events give us an opportunity to meet many of our community at one time, and they offer our members an opportunity to meet each other, to reconnect or catch up with friends they have made through the MPS Society.
Our community events make us stand out as a charity and we are continually striving to provide the something-to-look-forward-to moments for a community that experiences difficulties in their lives which go way beyond what some of us can imagine.
How you can help
We are thrilled to be taking part in The Big Give Christmas Challenge once again this year with the potential to raise an incredible £25,000!
From 12 midday on Tuesday 3 December to 12 midday Tuesday 10 December donations made to us via The Big Give website will be matched pound-for-pound; this means a donation to us could go twice as far and help fund our family events over 2025.
