Gift of Christmas is a community group that was formed in January 2020 to support families in the Mansfield and Ashfield community for those who need help at Christmas. In November this year, they spoke to Your Home Care to see if we had clients that would welcome a parcel from Gift of Christmas. We welcomed their gift and have graciously received a parcel for each and every one of our clients.

Amanda Braithwaite from The Gift of Christmas said:

“We firstly set up a Facebook fund raising page and did drag queen bingo nights, duck races and car boots to raise funds. Our aim was always to avoid any child not having a gift Christmas morning and then we looked into all aspects of Christmas to see who needed help. We then decided to approach one home care provider to give gifts to our elderly community who have no family, one care home to thank their staff for all their hard work and give each resident a treat. We then approached Sure Start to give food treat hampers and a gift to two families from each branch that then took us over 100 parcels.

Due to success in fund raising and support from the community we were then able to spread the love further by giving two hampers to each school in our community for families needing help this Christmas. Then finally, via our Facebook page, we received 65 direct nominations who will all receive multiple gifts, a food treat hamper and the full ingredients for a Christmas dinner with two meats of choice. Unfortunately, demand was so high that we have 55 on the list for dinners who we cannot help this year. We have worked hard as a team of volunteers for the last three months most days and we will finish our journey for 2020 on December 22nd.

Gift of Christmas is a community group, and every member has made this possible. Our group admins are Amanda Braithwaite, Sean Brown, Julie Clamp, Sharon Gullett Norman, Sue Hoefkens, Paul Hoefkens, Debbie Barlow, and Stevie Barlow. We are all happy and ready to help if our community need us this Christmas.

Thank you and Merry Christmas”

Your Home Care would like to thank Amanda and the team at Gift of Christmas for the wonderful packages that will be sent to our clients. They’re already being distributed and have made some of our clients very happy indeed.

Scott Marsh, Director of Your Home Care commented:

“Gift for Christmas is a wonderful group of people that are selflessly coming together to make sure no one is forgotten about this Christmas. We’re so thankful that they thought of us when choosing a care provider and we’ll return that favour next Christmas to help in any way we can to strengthen their project.”

For more information about Gift of Christmas, head over to their Facebook page.