00:00Hello there, my name is Felicity Kennedy. Back in 2023, in November, sadly my son Harry
00:07passed away. He was trying to be a social worker. He'd got such a love of passion of
00:11working with children and he deserves his name to carry on. He'd written a poem called
00:15Harry's Promise and we've taken Harry's Promise so he could become that social worker he wanted
00:19to be. So we set up the charity in February of 2024 and we've now been going for a whole
00:29year and we want to help children within the social care sector to help them thrive
00:33and grow and to reach their full potential. And our first initiative was to set up the
00:38Suitcase Appeal where we fundraise and we buy suitcases for children who are moving
00:43from placement to placement, whether that be in emergency foster care, emergency placement
00:48or just for respite. Sadly some children move from placement and they don't have a suitcase
00:52to carry their belongings in. And if you can imagine what it would be like to put your
00:56things in a black bag or a carrier bag. You've lost your identity, your self-esteem drops.
01:01So here we've donated two suitcases to Stalmont Children's Trust to help children. We've also
01:07reached out to the 14 local authorities in the West Midlands and hopefully we're working
01:11in partnership with them. Going forward we want to carry on building these relations
01:17and links we have to provide suitcases but also to provide experiences where children
01:22can learn to live life again because they've had the hardest start in life and that shouldn't
01:26be what children have. So we'll be building these links. We also want to help children
01:30who are 16 to 25 years of age. Once we've got a blueprint down here in the West Midlands
01:35we'd like to take this up to Hull because that's where Harry studied at Hull University.
01:39And then we'd like to go off across the rest of the country supporting not just children
01:43but also social workers. How can we get more children and adults to become social workers?
01:48How can we train social workers? And just how can we make this world a better place
01:52when sometimes children don't have the greatest start in life. Thank you for supporting Harry's promise.
01:57So tell us a little bit more about this man then, this Harry.
02:00So Harry is my third child. He has middle child syndrome. He's never loved enough, never cared for
02:08but in reality he gets most of the attention all the time. He's a home bird. And when in
02:142022 he went to Hull University it was quite hard seeing him go but Harry flourished.
02:19He was the glue to his cohort. He kept everyone together and everybody knew who Harry was.
02:24If someone was sitting on the row he would go and sit with them. He was the most amazing
02:28person ever. He started planning something. He was on the front line going to assess families
02:33and children to see how they were and who he could support. And sadly Harry got a cold
02:39and this cold was a virus and it broke off and it got to his heart and sadly Harry went
02:44into cardiac arrest where he was down for 15 minutes and the doctors and nurses worked
02:49so hard they got Harry's heart beat back and we were granted a week, a special week
02:54where we got to love Harry and hold him and tell him how much he was loved.
02:57And sadly Harry did pass away because his brain injury was so catastrophic he couldn't
03:02recover from that. But parts of Harry walk on. He donated his two kidneys and his liver.
03:08So Harry does walk on but Harry deserved to have his name told and shared because he would
03:13have made changes to social work. So Harry's promise came about because of that tragic
03:17loss we have and we're still dealing with that today. Grief is one of the loneliest
03:21paths you ever walk and to have to bury a child is one of the saddest things you have
03:25to do and this is something that I survive each day but through Harry's strength and
03:31love we carry on and we want to make the world a better place.
03:35And for that to happen from just a cold starting, that must be quite a rare thing.
03:41It was, yeah. It was. Harry had had the most amazing weekend. He'd just met up with his
03:47boyfriend who'd just started seeing and sadly that tragic event happened but Harry passed
03:54away loved. He passed away with family and friends. I remember the night before Harry
04:00was going to go down for surgery to donate his organs. As a family we sat with him, his
04:04brothers and his sisters and his aunt and we played Harry's music and we were singing
04:08Christmas songs and holding him and loving him and the nurse sat there with us. It was
04:12such a beautiful memory that we will cherish forever.
04:17Hi, my name's Stephen Gaultney. I'm Director of Operations at Samwell Children's Trust.
04:21It's great to be working with Felicity in relation to Harry's promise charity. It's
04:29a charity which is brilliant in the fact that it's working with our children, it's
04:33supporting our children we care for. Particularly, sometimes our children have to move, move
04:39homes in emergencies and quite often they don't have their suitcases often to move in
04:45with kind of black bags, etc, etc. The charity provides suitcases which provides to build
04:53their identities and these suitcases and the charity working together will be a massive
04:59support for our children.
Comments