Leaving the supermarket the other day we saw a young couple with a little girl maybe about eighteen months to two years old. She was ever so cute and was carrying a little handbag, clearly to be like mum, she headed across to the wire shopping baskets and struggled to try to pick one up, which was clearly far too big for her. Daddy came to the rescue and went and collected one of the children’s shopping trollies that our local Morrisons have recently invested in. The little girl proudly placed her handbag in the trolley, then trotted off happily with her mum and dad to do their shopping. Only a matter of a couple of years ago there were just a couple of trolleys in each store, but I am glad to see that the supermarket had the wisdom to have purchased a couple of dozen now and also have a whole range of shopping trolley options.
Today in the Methodist Church, we remember the work of Action for Children formally known as “The National Children’s Home” It saddens me that as I look at the website https://www.actionforchildren.org.uk/ there is little evidence of the partnership with the Methodist Church unless you look at the history pages. Yet the charity was founded in 1839 by Rev Thomas Bowman Stephenson and for many years was a vital part of the work of the people called Methodists. As mentioned in previous years, I have a personal connection as my maternal grandmother grew up in the home in Sutton Coldfield and as a family, we owe so much to the charity for the gift they have given to us.
When I was a lad, the work of NCH was mainly focussed on orphanages, and we had the Hilton Grange home at Bramhope just up the road from where we lived. I can remember a programme on Christmas Day when I was a teenager which came from the home in Harpenden where the children sang Christmas carols. I remember each year being given a little booklet called “Sunny Smiles” with pictures of individual children on the perforated pages. We would sell the pictures to raise funds for the charity. I cringe today as I try to imagine all the legislation that would prevent doing anything like this today, but it all felt so innocent back then.
While I desperately want to cling onto those memories of the past, I look at the work of Action for children today and I continue to be proud of the work they do, meeting the needs of the most vulnerable children in society. The website claims that over a hundred and fifty years after Thomas Stephenson welcomed the first two boys into his own home, the charity currently has 426 projects helping around three quarter of a million children. The charity bears little resemblance to the work of fifty years ago, but is relevant and essential in the world today and I am proud that the Methodist Church continues to support this work.