Leeds & Yorkshire Housing Association (LYHA) is supporting in 2011 the Child’s Voice Appeal, a campaign run by the NSPCC to increase ChildLine’s capacity for answering calls from children and young people in distress.

The fund raising activities started with special guest, John Dammone, owner of Salvo’s Restaurant in Headingley, who offered his culinary skills to judge a cake making competition.(Pictured with winners Barbara Daines, Chris Whittaker and David Whitehead)
A book sale and a raffle, with a top prize of a meal for two at Salvo’s, also provided fundraising entertainment over the lunchtime.(Also pictured David & Sandra Hudson of the Valley Court Residents Association)

In April, Jason Hutchinson & Chris Whittaker (pictured)organised a very popular car wash over two days. Later in May, in the grounds of our office in Headingley we held a plant sale and raffle(pictured). A kind donation was received from the St Ann’s Residents Association. In June a fund raising quiz was organised by Ceri Lewis, then in July LYHA's annual staff BBQ was held in honour of Child Line. The final event of our fund raising was the Great North Run completed by Sue Milnes in just over 2 hours.

ANSWERING CALLS FOR HELP
Each year, ChildLine answers thousands of calls from children and young people struggling with a range of issues from bullying to neglect but figures show that nationally, approximately 20 per cent of calls go unanswered due to a lack of resources. In Leeds, out of approximately 15,000 calls, almost 500 were not answered in 2009.