Ormiston Families supports families in the East of England to build resilience, and make choices to improve the life chances of children. It takes early and preventative actions to create safe, healthy and resilient families who feel in control of their own wellbeing. The charity exists today because of one family’s tragedy: a young woman, Fiona Ormiston Murray, died whilst on her honeymoon. Fiona loved children and it was no secret that she was excited about starting her own family. Her family, devastated by their loss, wanted to do something to honour her memory. They therefore created a charitable trust devoted to helping children and families in need.
Ormiston Trust opened its first service in 1981, The Robert Milne Centre, a home for looked after children in Ipswich. By 1992, it was funding an increasingly diverse range of services for children, young people, and families across the region, so it established a separate charitable trust to manage these services – Ormiston Children and Families Trust. In 2014, Ormiston Children and Families Trust changed its name to Ormiston Families to reflect the fact that all of the work it is now doing is focused on working 'with' families in order to positively impact the lives of children and young people.
Ormiston Families provides a range of services that fall under three main categories: working with families affected by imprisonment or offending behaviour of a relative, mental health and wellbeing services, and working with communities across the East of England. It has around 230 employees and close to 100 regional volunteers. The charity now supports around 15,000 children and families each year, and provides an excess of 35,000 interventions.
Over the past two years, the charity has been able to maintain a strong position by switching many of its services to online delivery during lockdown restrictions. However, Ormiston Families is now looking to resume face-to-face work with children and their families and to expand across the East of England, ensuring better coverage with an emphasis on addressing immediate mental health needs as well as building resilient tools for long-term prevention.