Team JAM will be raising funds for The Janice Ann McNaughton Foundation to provide Bursaries to improve access to higher education for disadvantaged young people. Each Bursary costs £3k and so with your help, we can meet our target and fund 5 further Bursaries! To help extend the benefit of our Bursary we have negotiated with the NHS who will then provide a similar bursary in the second and final year of the students degree programme.

The JAM Foundation was set up as a Registered Charity to provide a fitting legacy to my late mother on her 30th anniversary. She dedicated her career as a social worker to improving the lives of children and young people and protecting the most vulnerable. An abiding memory is the house phone ringing in the middle of the night, before she would have to head off to yet another emergency. No mobile phones or pagers back then!

Her caseload would typically involve incidents of child abuse and neglect, through to the more uplifting experiences of securing a foster home for a child or finalising an adoption. It remains something of a mystery how she managed all this while raising her own family, before she was sadly taken from us in 1991 at the age of 47. She remains an inspiration to us all and seeing the impact she had on others, undoubtedly played a part in my decision to pursue a career in the police.

Ironically, the relationship between the police and social services has often been challenging, with conflicting strategies on the best way to deal with children and young people. Fortunately, this situation has dramatically improved, with both organisations now often co-located and collaborating on a daily basis. However, both organisations have experienced significant funding challenges over the last couple of decades placing increasing pressure on their resources and services. Tragic cases such as Victoria Climbie, Baby P and only recently, Arthur Labinjo-Hughes and Star Hobson, only serve to highlight this and the critical need for highly trained and dedicated social workers to undertake this vocation.

With this in mind, we set an initial target of launching a Bursary in September 2022 for a place on the Social Work Degree Programme at the University of Hertfordshire, one of the leading UK educational centres for those with a social work vocation. We have a collaborative arrangement in place with Hertfordshire County Council who will mentor our Bursary students through the programme to successful employment with their Social Work Department.

I am delighted to say that we have successfully hit that initial target and have significant ambition in providing support to an increased number of young people.

Specifically, our Bursaries will be granted to young people from disadvantaged backgrounds who are committed to training as social workers. We will prioritise supporting care leavers, a high proportion of whom show an interest in becoming social workers themselves. We recognise that such young people will be able to draw on their own experiences and bring an invaluable level of empathy and credibility to the role. The Bursary would therefore not only have supported that one young person, but the scores of children and young people that they in turn go onto help throughout their careers.

Over the years, I have worked alongside social workers on many occasions and witnessed at first hand the incredible challenges and sometimes harrowing situations they are faced with. The supportive, loving families and relative comfort that many of us will have experienced are sadly a million miles away from the reality of too many children and young people. There are thousands of social workers up and down the country that, like my mother did, do everything they can to make a difference. She was passionate about mentoring and supporting her colleagues. Sadly, she has been deprived any further opportunity to do that. We hope our Bursaries will be the next best thing!

I'd like to introduce you to our first Bursary recipient, Kelli. She is both inspirational and remarkable and already providing mentor support to other young care users. She has, in her own words below, explained what this Bursary means to her both now and for her future.

Kelli's Story

Please visit our website to find out more about the Charity and Kelli's inspirational story!

www.thejamfoundation.org

It may be that you represent a company or organisation that would consider supporting us or you may have some ideas for our future fundraising efforts. Either way, it would be great to hear from you via our contact page.

Many thanks

Andy McNaughton, Chair of Trustees.