Last Tuesday, SI Tenby president Eleanor Parker was delighted to welcome Karen Minton, service manager for the NSPCC, as guest speaker at the first business meeting since the summer break.

Karen gave a very personal account of her work with the NSPCC in the form of a photographic diary. This commenced with a picture of her daughter, whose death 20 years ago had been the reason that she had undertaken a degree course and become a social worker.

Karen then gave an absorbing and effectively illustrated account of the variety of services she and her team provide at Ty Findlay in Swansea, one of the three centres for the NSPCC in Wales. This included provision of prenatal educational programmes, improving parenting, helping children and their mothers to recover from domestic abuse, supporting children in care and detecting and tackling neglect in order to provide the right support for families.

Karen also discussed the work of Childline which merged with the NSPCC in 2000 - every 20 seconds they receive a call from a child and in Wales 157 trained volunteer counsellors operate out of two regional bases in Cardiff and Prestatyn. Karen then outlined two of the NSPCC’s current campaigns - keeping children safe from abuse and keeping kids safe online.

The NSPCC is an independent charity and is reliant on the support of the general public, as well as its huge team of dedicated volunteers and fundraising supporters.

President Eleanor thanked Karen for giving such a fascinating insight into the many services provided by the NSPCC and hoped that the club could help with fund-raising for this very important charity in the future.