Children's Adventure Farm Trust welcomes families back

The charity had major plans for 2020, including raising more funds and inviting more children to visit.

However it has been hard hit by the lockdown, which saw the staff being furloughed and the site run by a skeleton crew, including CAFT CEO Ian Eccles.

Following the relaxation of restrictions on how far people could travel for exercise the charity piloted a scheme with families coming to visit for a few hours.

The programme has been a great success, and the charity is now welcoming three families at one time each day, in two-hour slots during the morning, lunchtime and afternoon.

The charity has 140 families booked in, and the temporary scheme of family visits could continue until the end of July and into August.

Ian said: “Up to the middle of March fundraising was going really well, we had quite a lot of groups booked in and were on target to get 5,400 children in through the year.

“Then the announcement came out that if you could work from home you should be doing that.

“We had to put the farm into lockdown, sent all the staff home and kept it going with the skeleton crew, with myself and one or two volunteers coming in to feed the animals and take care of cutting the grass and hedges.

“We put the staff on a furlough scheme, which allowed us to reduce our outgoings significantly.

“We were making plans for how we might be able to adapt, then came the advice that people could travel a little bit further for exercise.”

Families who are visiting the charity are using the outdoor area - seeing the animals, enjoying the play park and using the woodland area.

Ian said: “The families really appreciate being able to visit because taking their children to a public place is quite hard.

“We allocate each family to a space, and social distancing is maintained really well.

“A lot of them have been locked down entirely – they haven’t even been out of the house, and for most them it’s their first proper visit anywhere.

“The children are overjoyed because they are getting to see the animals which are very friendly and love attention.”

Ian said all CAFT’s funding was voluntary, and after reassessing the budget for the year it expected to raise £700,000 instead of the originally anticipated £1.2 million.

He added: “Fundraising is going to be significantly impacted - our ladies lunch has been postponed until September and we have moved our golf day to October.

“One of the things we are looking at is trying to increase our small, regular donations from the public, who are able to donate through our website.

“We are keeping an open mind on our residential and normal day trip programmes, and are looking at options at how we might operate in terms of families coming to stay with us.

“We are hopeful that from the new academic year we will be able to run some of our existing programmes again.”

Below are some of the comments received by the charity from families who have visited in the past few weeks.

“Thank you so much to everyone involved in allowing our afternoon visit to CAFT today. We had a fabulous time. It has been so difficult for us as a family with a disabled child during lockdown and our visit gave us all a much-needed boost to our physical and mental wellbeing. We laughed, played, relaxed and really enjoyed our time together. I can’t stop smiling just savouring the memories of it.”

“I just wanted to thank you for giving us the opportunity to visit your farm today. It has to be one of the most relaxing trips out we’ve had in a long time. He loved doing his own things in each zone and it was great to see him having so much fun and having the freedom to run around. His sister and brother both had fun and loved feeding the animals the most. We hadn’t even left the car park when the kids asked ‘when can we come back?’ Always the best sign of them having a great day. Thank you again, it’s never easy going on family trips with a child who is on the autistic spectrum and with sensory issues. Today was just simply great from our perspective.”

“I just wanted to say a huge thank you, my mum has just called to say the boys had a fabulous time and loved it, thank you so much, I will be making a donation to the charity tonight to say a massive thank you“

“I just want to say a huge thank you for today, it was absolutely mind-blowing, the boys had the most amazing time and we’ve made some wonderful memories. My oldest has said I wish we could start the day again, it’s been the best day we’ve had for a long time.”