The Bobby Colleran Trust
The Pitch
Problem statement
Following the death of 6-year-old Bobby Colleran in a tragic road accident in 2014 ‘The Bobby Colleran Trust’ was initially established to create awareness campaigns about road safety. With the ultimate aim of preventing further loss of life, the trust advocated for changes in speed limits in school catchment areas (which it achieved), ran road safety assemblies for children and created Bobby Zones under the campaign ‘Slowdown 4 bobby’. Following on from this the trust then established ‘Take Care for Bobby’, a new initiative that seeks to provide free mental health and bereavement services to children and young adults. This campaign was introduced to combat long NHS wait times.
Solution
We are launching our centre for health and wellbeing after more than eight years of fundraising. Bobby’s Base, in West Derby, will be delivering free health and wellbeing support to children and young people across the region, which in normal circumstances there is a wait time of approx. 6 months to a 1 year but after COVID these wait times are further extended. Featuring three dedicated therapy rooms, including a group therapy space, the centre will also feature a sensory garden and an informal chat and chill space to provide holistic and diverse mental health treatments and support for children and young people. The base will be a hub for both initiatives.
Why are we best placed to deliver?
‘Slow Down for Bobby’ road safety campaign was launched 2014, when 6-year-old Bobby Colleran was killed in a road accident. The impact on the mental health of Bobby’s siblings led his mother, Joanne, to spearhead both the Bobby Zones and the improvement of bereavement therapy for young people whilst fundraising through the annual Bobby Blue Day, football tournaments and events throughout the year to raise funds to get the centre up and running and provide free counselling to those in need. In the current year the trust has provided 35 school assemblies and 360 counselling sessions. Once the centre is fully up and running this number can be doubled and a lot more children can be helped.
Focus Areas
Delivery plan
Budget breakdown
| Provide 20 children and families with a min of 10 therapy sessions per family. | £3,000 |
Beneficiaries
80 people
Expected impact
The family found that child bereavement support counselling was significant in helping the children to better understand their loss and grief and to develop coping strategies to manage anxieties and fears and sadness. Ultimately to find the ability to re-invest in home, school, friends, and football/sports and the potential for fun life has to offer. This is the reasoning behind the trust establishing their own bereavement/counselling services in April 2018. However, we remain restricted to school term as our counsellors currently only provide services on school grounds. Not only is this problematic for children who are suffering outside of term-time and cannot receive treatment, but it also can impact whether some children even come to us for help, as they may not want to publicly acknowledge this in front of their peers. The centre will enable us to provide double the amount of counselling and support without restriction, as well as providing additional longer-term treatments.
Track record
The trust has already achieved so much over the past 8 years, the greatest being that we managed to change the law. After much petitioning to parliament, in 2016 the government changed the law and implement a new maximum speed limit in school boundaries across the UK named ‘Bobby Zones’. It is also notable that despite the pandemic we have still become successful in finding a location, acquiring a building, and getting to the point where we are almost at the milestone of having a fully functioning therapy centre by autumn.