Pact of togetherness

YOU would not readily link Yvette Gayford and her work with the activities of Premiership football Wags.

But the wives and girlfriends of the Reading players certainly helped to give Yvette something of a right 'Royals' send off.

Over the past 12 years she has been the driving force behind the Oxfordshire family charity Parents and Children Together (Pact), which runs projects for vulnerable families in Abingdon, Didcot, Berinsfield, Wantage and Sutton Courtenay.

During her years at the helm, the charity has found families for hundreds of children who have been put up for adoption or long-term fostering.

Now as she prepares to retire as chief executive, Yvette can look back to 2007 as a special year for Pact, helped by two very different Royal families.

The Wags of Reading, who operate the fundraising group The Royal Families (in recognition of the club's nickname), adopted Pact as its charity last year. And a series of special events, such as a Champagne tasting session (well, some old habits die hard) and an auction at the Madejski Stadium, helped bring in more than £30,000. Sophie Countess of Wessex even made a special request to meet the Reading FC ladies in recognition of their work for the Oxfordshire charity.

Then, just over Christmas, the curtain was brought down on Yvette's reign with a farewell party held at Windsor Castle.

Rather than looking back, however, Yvette used the occasion to mark the launch of a DVD, which it is hoped will herald the start of a new era for the charity.

In many ways the splendour of the castle's setting was in stark contrast to the stories of the youngsters who she has helped down the years, as the victims of domestic violence, debt and homelessness.

"It is sometimes surprising for people to realise that there are children living within our area who enjoy very few luxuries," said Yvette.

"I recently read a little thank-you note from two children, aged eight and six, who had been taken on a Pact trip to the seaside. It was the first time the children had ever had such an experience."

The charity also focuses on finding good homes for hard-to-place children who have been through the care system.

This often involves older children, sibling groups or youngsters with complicated health or emotional needs.

Finding anyone prepared to take up that challenge is not easy.

Finding the right families is far more difficult.

Eyes of guests filled with tears at the Windsor event, as they were given first-hand accounts of how Pact goes about its work to "build and strengthen families".

They were introduced to Sue and Jim Clifford, a couple who were unable to conceive the big family that they had always wanted, but ultimately achieved it by adopting eight children, many who arrived into their village home scarred and deeply troubled.

Sue, 48, a special needs teacher, somehow found the words to describe the deep sense of satisfaction from bringing up the four girls and four boys they adopted over the last 17 years.

"When a child comes to you very damaged and traumatised, kicking and screaming 'I hate you, I hate you', and then when a year later that same child crawls on to your lap, takes a big sniff of the air and says 'mummy you smell of love' - well, that is the most fantastic experience."

They know that their children did not always lead such happy lives. One of their sons had been unwanted by his alcoholic parents and had spent the first two years of his life, day and night, strapped into a pushchair facing a wall.

He would hear what was happening around him but the other children were not allowed to speak to him.

Later guests heard from Tony Deall, who found himself left to bring up his young children alone when his partner died suddenly from a brain haemorrhage. He ultimately was to lose his job and then the family home.

Desperate, alone and homeless, he walked into a Pact day centre.

"Without their help, I don't know what we would have done," he said.

If the personal testaments of these people were perhaps the greatest tribute she could receive for her time at Pact, the wide range of its work also gives Yvette cause for pride.

A former psychiatric social worker, when she first arrived at Pact it was still a relatively small adoption agency, working on behalf of the Anglican Diocese of Oxford.

It had begun life in 1911 as the Oxford Diocesan Council for Rescue and Support.

Pact is, in fact, the day-to-day title for the Oxford Diocesan Council for Social Work and its president is the new Bishop of Oxford, the Rt Rev John Pritchard.

But while its links with the Diocese remain, under the Gayford leadership it has expanded the services it offers to become more than a family-finding charity.

It now runs a fathers' support group and offers money advice, 24-hour online support service, one-to-one support from a Pact social worker and homeopathy and nutritionist consultations. It also runs children's centres across the county, which offer drop-in sessions for all parents, carers and their children. Some operate after-school or breakfast clubs.

Since the 1990s, with the arrival of children from Romania, it has operated as an inter-country adoption agency, to find homes for children from China, Russia and Guatemala, for example.

This involvement undoubtedly led to Yvette being among the sternest critics of Madonna over the way she adopted a child from Africa. She publicly accused the pop star of "riding roughshod over internationally-agreed procedures for inter-country adoption", thereby exposing thousands of children in poverty to a heightened risk of exploitation and abuse.

And she warned that, at a stroke, Madonna had made the work of the adoption social worker a lot harder.

Yvette wrote: "The process for people who wish to adopt a child from abroad is designed to ensure that the child can properly be cared for and to ensure that sudden whims, however compassionate, do not prevail."

Her stance was driven by her underlying philosophy about adoption.

"Children are not toys, play things or commodities, and should be protected, regardless of the country in which they are born. Those of us involved in securing trustworthy families for some of the world's most hard-done-by children must ensure that prospective parents are fully prepared for the lifelong commitment they will undertake.

"This includes carrying out the appropriate checks so that children do not fall prey to those whose motives may be volatile or less than benign."

She will be handing over as chief executive in the spring to Jan Fishwick, a social worker with an adoption/fostering background, who is working for the London borough of Brent. But she will leave all too conscious of the fact that of the 60,000 children in local authority homes, families will be found for only about 3,000 a year.

The lack of people coming forward to adopt means that about 40 per cent of those youngsters in care will never experience family life.

Whether it is with the help of footballers' wives or a bishop, her determination to find more new families will continue until her last day.

"It is really difficult to identify any common denominator with adopters. They come from all backgrounds."

Contrary to pubic perceptions, there is no stated upper age limit and it is recognised that many people in their 40s and 50s will make excellent parents for children who need adoptive families.

"In fact, there are very few factors that would automatically rule you out," said Yvette. "The big criteria is that adopters have the health and vigour to take a child through to adulthood. The big message is that they do not have to be perfect. We expect people to have lived lives. Perfect people worry us."

• For more information on Pact, write to 7 Southern Court, South Street, Reading RG1 4QS, or telephone 0118 9387600, or email info@pactcharity.org