Mencap and Scope chosen as beneficiaries for Lord Mayor’s Appeal

Newly elected Lord Mayor of London, Alan Yarrow, has named disability charities Mencap and Scope as the two main beneficiaries of the Lord Mayor’s appeal.

The Lord Mayor’s appeal creates a new charitable theme every year and provides grants to a number of charities working to improve connected services and offer help to people.

This year’s charitable theme is ‘creating wealth, giving time and supporting people’ and will see funds given to Scope and Mencap to transform the lives of people and families affected by disability.

The Lord Mayor of London, Mr Yarrow, is also one of Mencap’s vice presidents and chose the charity after it provided help and support to his eldest son.

He said: “Having a disabled son has given our family first-hand experience of the need for support. We understand how parents and siblings can struggle to cope when a family member is disabled.”

Scope will now create the Scope Family Fund to develop the charity’s online Face 2 Face services, as well as increasing support services for families affected by disability and improve disability awareness at local and national level.

Mencap will use the support of the Lord Mayor’s appeal to increase its capacity to support disabled people to understand their choices by increasing access to information to improve their quality of life.

Richard Yorke, director of fundraising at Mepcap said: “There are 1.4 million people with a learning disability in the UK. There are almost a million family members caring for someone with a learning disability.

We know that 8 out of 10 families that include someone with severe or profound learning disabilities talk about feeling isolated and exhausted.

“With the generous support of the Lord Mayor’s Appeal, we can make a start.”

Both charities took part in the Lord Mayor’s Show on Saturday 8 November which saw many streets in central London closed to make way for the three and a half mile parade which dates back to 1215.

Modern processions are watched by around half a million people every year and next year the show will celebrate its 800th year.

Thomas Bachofner, creator of the blog The Future’s Rosie was on the Mencap float on Saturday, along with his daughter Rosie, who has a learning disability.

He said: “When my beautiful daughter Rosie was diagnosed with a learning disability, everything was all very negative. We were frightened at the time. Our life was about to change forever.

“Having a learning disability doesn’t mean there can be no quality of life and people need to know it’s not the end of the world. That is why having support is so important.

“My family joined in the Lord Mayor’s parade to show the families of people with a learning disability that there is support out there and to raise awareness of how important it is to continue to fight for what we deserve.”

As well as Scope and Mencap, the Lord Mayor’s Appeal is supporting a number of creative arts charities and institutions including The Royal Ballet School, the City & Guilds of London Art School and the Royal Academy to boost the work they do create future creative talents.