Over the past year my family has been affected by the break up of a relationship and the resulting heartache for us in dealing with the lack of an ongoing healthy relationship with my nephew Harvey, aged almost three, and his sister Isabelle aged almost one. As a family we do not enjoy any real quality time with them, but more importantly their father is not currently able to spend sufficient time with them to nurture his relationship with his children. As a result he has joined an organisation to help redress that balance. I fully support the philosophy of the organisation Families Need Fathers that says "it’s the children that are important and both parents should be fully engaged in their upbringing".
It is for this reason that on Sunday 21st March I ran the Reading Half Marathon in a personal best time of 1 hour and 47 minutes, and went on to run the Paris Marathon on Sunday 11th April in another best time of 3 hours, fifty five minutes and forty seconds in order to raise money for the charity and show my family that I support them in the struggle to ensure that both Harvey and Isabelle can enjoy a relationship with both parents and the wider family. Having completed both races I am pleased to say that I have suffered no ill effects and have continued running in order to maintain a certain level of fitness. The big question now is do I go on and run another marathon? This requires some thought and I will keep you all posted. I would just like to add a big thank you to all those people who were kind enough to sponsor me and as the page stays open a little longer it is not too late to do so now.
The Charity Families Need Fathers seeks to obtain, for the children, the best possible blend of both parents in the lives of children; enough for the children to realise that both parents are fully involved in their lives. (Legally, parents should be of equal status). They believe that responsibilities and obligations, caring and financial, should be fairly shared between both parents.
Families Need Fathers is firstly a social care organisation, helping parents whose children's relationship with them is under threat. We offer information, advice and support services for parents on how to do the best for their children. We are the only organisation that provides these services on a national basis.
Families Need Fathers lobbies in a professional and highly effective way for changed legal and social attitudes. They have regular contact with politicians, the judiciary and the media. Their immediate priorities are getting courts orders for shared residence, improvements in the time children are allowed to spend with their 'second parent', more effective action taken when one parent defies a court order requiring them to allow their children a relationship with the other parent, and replacing adversarial court hearings over children-matters with child-centred discussion.
The charity largely depends on subscriptions and donations for a substantial amount of its work.
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