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The Osborne Trust was founded after our founder/CEO was diagnosed with cancer age 36 years. Emma was Mum to 2 children aged 7 & 4 and found support was lacking for her children.
Emma was diagnosed in 2013 and spent 10 months going through cancer treatment, operations, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy, with many hospitals stays due to infections and complications. Throughout this time Emma’s thoughts were always on how best to support her children. She asked at every appointment was there anything locally or nationally that could support the kids and was met with a brick wall, she found lots of services for herself but nothing specifically focusing on supporting her children through this time.
The family got through it by planning activities around Emma’s treatment. Dad would take the kids off to the cinema, a play centre, a farm park so Emma could have some time to rest, and the kids got out of the house from seeing Emma so poorly form her gruelling treatment.
At the same time as Emma’s treatment, someone Emma knew was diagnosed with cancer with 3 children and was self-employed, unable to work due to treatment and accessing statutory sick pay. This got Emma thinking about the financial implications a cancer diagnosis has for a family and how getting a day out or going to the cinema could be a luxury that stopped when a parent had cancer due to money worries. From there the first ideas for the Trust was born.
Emma finished her treatment in the February of 2014 and once through this she got to work on looking into setting up a charity to support children during a parent’s cancer. She asked her own children what they would have found beneficial, one idea was a teddy to cuddle and provide them comfort when she was in hospital and Ozzy the Elephant was born.
Since we supported our first family in January 2015, over 2,300 children have been supported.
