Sign in here for Giving Week 2015: nominate your favourite organisation, charity or worthy cause

Another vote for the Abortion Support Network

I'd like to nominate The Open Nest (and Twitter), a charity which supports adoptive families who are struggling with their childrens needs (many of these children having been through hugely traumatising experiences). The founder Amanda and her daughter Jazz recently spoke to the BBC about their story (they were highlighting why families so need support via a new government fund), which is here

Respite care for children generally is increasingly difficult to find, including for many adoptive families whose children have been deeply traumatised by terrible experiences in their early lives and thus have a huge need for extra support in all areas of their lives. A core aim of The Open Nest is to provide families with respite care for a week at a time at their caravan site. They also support parents in crisis to help avoid the family unit breaking down, help bring parents together, are getting a summer camp going and hope to provide more much needed training to parents and professionals. I can't imagine how helpful respite would have been for me at times when I was on my knees with no support and no one who seemed to understand what my child and I were going through, so I want nothing more than for people to have that opportunity which will hopefully result in families staying together (when adoption disruption is not uncommon) and so children who have already suffered sometimes unspeakable abuse to not go through even more loss and pain.

and i will also cast a vote for IPSEA :)

I am going to once again, nominate

Hope House

Hope House Children's Hospices - Hope House at Oswestry and T? Gobaith at Conwy - provide care and support to life-limited children, young people and their families from Shropshire, Cheshire, North and Mid Wales.

A range of services is offered, including respite and end-of-life care at the hospices and/or within the family home, and support such as counselling, advocacy and the promotion of children, young people's and carers' rights.

Support is available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

"Your help is vital so that we can provide the care and support that our children, young people and families so desperately need. We must raise over £4 million every year to maintain our services and receive just one month's funding from statutory bodies."

I know Mumsnet supported one of these charity's who covered the london/south area last year. It would be nice if some of the nominated charities this year could look beyond London, and Hope House covers such a massive area of England/Wales.

Voting - not opting - no idea why that happened.

Thank you for opting for PLANETS, ReallyAm - it means a lot to me, as I explained further up-thread.

I vote for:

Breakaway Foundation
PLANETS
Mummy's Wish

I agree with Wooly Hugs gracious decision to withdrawn from this year's nominations. And Women's Aid struggled to receive enough donations last year so not a popular choice.

SOS SEN. They do brilliant work helping children with SEN and disabilities and their families both directly and indirectly and in keeping them informed of their rights and how to exercise them. Their helpline has helped lots of mums netters.

I would like to nominate the Ectopic Pregnancy Trust and, if I'm allowed to, add my vote to those for the Abortion Support Network.

Can I nominate the Amber Phillpott Trust please? They fund research I to childhood AML and the research they are funding has shown extremely positive results as they identified a drug which starves AML cells of what they need to grow. Research into children's cancer is vastly underfunded and this small charity, set up the parents if Amber who died aged 17 monthes is doing amazing things.

Www.amberphillpotttrust.com

My vote goes to the Abortion Support Network.

In that case I fear you could be about to be sucked into the vortex of WH, sadwidow - as you can tell from the homepage there are always projects going on, whether individual ones for MNers here or Billie's Blankets, the Chernobyl project and so on. Everyone is welcome to join in, you can PM them or post on one of the threads or on their Facebook page ... or Tweet them ... basically any way you can think of to send up the bat signal will reach them :)

Fank U Tripot. I will look at the link. I am a great crafter though if they need more fingers working ....... I crochet 20-30 cat/baby blankies every couple of months - and knit hats for prem babies.

I would be happy to divert some crafting to them.

sadwidow it's always possible to donate to Woolly Hugs, someone has to keep them in gin after all! On the homepage there's a link to Paypal to make a donation.

I also vote for woolly hugs. Whilst they have been magnanimous in withdrawing from 2015, I think the nomination and votes should stand as the truly MN charitable organisation.

I will get in contact with the organisers to see how I can help practically. But I hope they are in the top 5 chosen.

I Vote. RAVSCA for the children of the future to be safe,

I vote for RAVSCA

I would like to second the Trethosa Hut Project, nominated by Pastamancer.

Just read the thing about not national charities - sorry! I maintain adoption UK though, yes it's a national charity but not well known or supported unless you are in the field.

Barnardos - the support they offer families and children who are struggling is amazing and can make the difference between a child staying in a safe, loving birth family with support or being unsafe or placed into care.
Adoption UK - support families going through the adoption process and living with kids who are struggling because of traumatic and damaging starts to life.

That may be so, SDTG. But there are still a lot of us who would like to nominate them. They are a very important, and integral, part of Mumsnet which is why so many of us have nominated them again.

Woolly Hugs have withdrawn themselves from the running this year, because they won last year.

I add my vote for woollyhugs

And for the abortion support network
It is apalling what women in Ireland have to go through .
www.abortionsupport.org.uk/

I'd like to vote for Action Duchenne too. My old neighbours lost 2 sons with Duchennes. One was 22 the other 23. They were lovely lads, always smiling.

My ex husband has Becker muscular dystrophy and through him I met a few boys, teenagers with Duchennes.

I'd like to nominate Action Duchenne which is searching for a cure and aims to improve life for those with Muscular Dystrophy. It is thankfully a very rare disease (affects around 2500 in the UK) but as such the charity is not well known. Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy is described by the charity as "progressive muscle weakness (which) leads to serious medical problems, particularly issues relating to the heart and lungs. Young men with Duchenne typically live into their late twenties."

www.actionduchenne.org

I know parents whose son has this terrible disease and they expect him to be in a wheelchair by the age of 10 and are having to face the terrible thought that he has a much reduced life expectancy. There is real hope for a cure but now without significant support from charities such as Action Duchenne.

Can I also nominate PLANETS - a cancer charity based at Southampton hospital, focussing on Pancreatic, Liver (and biliary) And Neuro-Endocrine Tumours; and the Countess Mountbatten Hospice, in Southampton.

My wonderful MIL died in early December last year, of lung cancer, secondary to pancreatic cancer, and these are the two charities which she chose for donations at her funeral - the charity was very close to her heart, as she felt these tumours needed more research and funding, and the hospice cared for her as an in-patient for 6 weeks and then provided the round-the-clock care that allowed her to have her final wish - to die at home.

Their care for MIL, BIL and dh was amazing, and made a painful and heartbreaking time just a little bit easier to bear.