The Ambulance Services Benevolent Fund is the only UK ambulance service charity to offer care to all ambulance personnel. 2011 is a very significant year for the ASBF as it marks 25 years since Norman Lakin had the personal vision and consideration for his fellow members of the ambulance services to set up the ASBF.
As well as marking its Silver Jubilee in 2011, the ASBF will pass a milestone of having provided help and support to one thousand people facing a personal crisis or hardship, the equivalent of one person every ten days. The assistance given to serving members and their families cover a variety of distressing circumstances. Many are the direct result of the stressful and demanding incidents service personnel are exposed to on a daily basis. Our sadness in regard to this statistic is that so many needed our help and in some cases the charity would have wanted to provide a higher level of assistance but shortage of funds prevented us doing so.
The ASBF Jubilee year is an opportunity to remind everyone that we exist and to appeal for fund raising activities from as many people as possible. This can be achieved by organizing a fundraising event or sign up and make a regular donation through one of the donation from salary schemes such as ‘Give As You Earn’ or the odd pennies from your monthly salary scheme—‘Pennies From Heaven’.
This appeal is not aimed solely at the individual members of the ambulance services but also at chief executives, chairman and trust boards. Senior managers in the service are in an ideal position to encourage personnel to adopt the ASBF as their charity in an effort to raise desperately needed funding. In fact, some services have already taken this on board by adopting the ‘Pennies from Heaven’ scheme with the beneficiary being the ASBF. This is a scheme where the service as a whole agrees that the ‘odd pennies’ on everybody's monthly salary are automatically donated to the nominated charity, e.g. if your salary for the month is £1050. 53p you would receive the £1050 and the 53p would go to the charity. Such schemes need encouragement and driving from the top. Does your trust support its personnel in this way? For more information please go to: www.penniesfromheaven.co.uk.
Similarly, board level encouragement for ‘Give As You Earn’ (with board members leading by example) could have the effect of transforming the ability of the ASBF to assist members of the service when difficulties arise. The ASBF has the hope that it will in due course, like the police and the fire service charities, be able to provide rehabilitative care for personnel to speed their return to full health and work to benefit not only that of the individual but also of the trust.
‘The ASBF Jubilee year is an opportunity to remind everyone that we exist and to appeal for fund raising activities from as many people as possible’
The ASBF receives no government support or any funding through membership fees and therefore, it relies entirely on voluntary donations. However, the ASBF aims to strengthen its links at station and locality level by finding serving personnel from each service to volunteer as its representatives and be a direct link to the charity when help is needed.It is hoped that these volunteers will encourage colleagues to organize fund-raising in many various ways and to promote the idea of giving a regular monthly donation.
Can we encourage you to take up the challenge to compete in the VUE National Emergency Services Annual Triathlon Championships? This event will take place on 13 May 2011 at the National Water Sports Centre, Holme Pierre Point, Nottingham. The challenge involves an open swim sprint of 750 m, 20 km flat cycle and a 5 km run.
Details will be sent out to all ambulance services but for further information, log on to the event management: One Step Beyond: www.onestepbeyond.org.uk; VUE—Vision Unique Equipment Ltd: www.vue-cctv.co.uk.
Help us to make the ASBF Jubilee year special by raising record funds that will enable us to carry out even more vital work.