Vote for Carys in the Community Champion Awards!

Carys is the events coordinator for Merry-go-round. She oversees the events space and programmes all of Merry-go-round’s events. You’ll have seen her giving out the cups of tea and biscuits for the Mum’s the Word support groups where, in her words, ‘Being a mum can be hard work and a bit lonely. Come and chat, have a coffee, have a laugh, have a cry.’ She runs or coordinates our buggy walks, breastfeeding support groups, weaning advice workshops, cloth nappy information sessions and more. She provides opportunities for local practitioners to run music or signing classes. She also programmes a highly praised and well attended series of ante-natal classes.

As you know, we went into lockdown in March 2020 and may well relate to the isolation many parents and carers felt during the pandemic without the support of family, friends and health professionals. Carys was concerned that families would no longer receive all the essential support her events provided.

She very quickly adapted her events programme so that it was accessible online. She took her friendly, caring and relaxed attitude online and her smiling face was there to support the parents and carers who dropped in for her sessions. She set up a breastfeeding support group with an NCT lactation consultant on hand to give one-to-one support via a private chat room. In the main zoom group she chatted to and supported the breastfeeding mums. 

The ante-natal classes she programmed became a vital lifeline for parents-to-be. For a while Merry-go-round’s classes were the only online classes available and due to their online nature, their reach extended well beyond Glasgow. Quite simply, Carys has helped with the health and wellbeing of hundreds of mums, dads and carers in Glasgow, particularly throughout lockdown when many of us were feeling isolated. Being a parent can be difficult at the best of times, and Carys immediately recognised that her real-life events needed to be transposed to an online version. This gave parents and carers the chance to talk online, to share worries and anxieties and to feel less alone.

Those of you who’ve met her will know that her friendly, informal and open attitude makes her connect really well to the parents and carers she supports. She is organised, dedicated and professional and she has the utmost compassion for the families she works with. We don’t know what we’d do without her!

We asked some of the mums at Carys’s Mum’s the Word session to describe her effect on her groups and one mum said, ‘She’s excellent!’ Another called her a ‘master conversation starter’. One mum said how lovely it felt for her and her baby to be remembered by Carys: ‘She remembered us from about a month ago. She remembered our names and welcomed us back.’ Another mum said that Mum’s the Word was the first group she ever attended and she’s been coming ever since, thanks, in no small part, to Carys and the supportive atmosphere she creates. 

Since March 2020 which includes two lockdowns, there have been a total of 3204 participants at Merry-go-round events. The breastfeeding support groups have had 266 attendees since March 2020 and the Dads and Weans group has had over 170. All of the events are either facilitated, programmed or coordinated by Carys. Please do give your vote to Carys. The voting process is simple. Just click on the link, choose ‘South’ and you’ll find the Health and Wellbeing voting section.

http://newsquestscotlandevents.com/events/glasgowcommchamps/?fbclid=IwAR2-8mrAhmY3B_vxx2AQNEAvJBh6J10_oO-WdSv126e9zB7H4LNXIJX7RqY

Thank you!