Project Linus UK 'Santa's helpers' in full swing preparing for foster children's Christmas blankets

Nexus Fostering has teamed up with Charity Project Linus UK, which creates hand-made blankets for children and young people across the UK. The project kindly provides blankets for our welcome boxes across our nine offices. They wish for the blankets they make to give the feeling of a hug and provide comfort in unsettling times for children.

In October, Naomi had the pleasure of visiting Project Linus in Haslingfield. Here, she met Sheila, who coordinates the project, and some ladies who make the blankets for our children and young people's welcome boxes across Cambridgeshire. There is quite a process involved, from selecting fabric to deciding what kind of blanket will be made, all the measuring and cutting out, and then magically putting all these small pieces of fabric together to create the wonderful product we are familiar with.

During the visit, Naomi from our fostering agency talked about fostering and the children we support and shared personal cards with the ladies from children who have written to them and treasured the quilts they received. You can imagine that there was a tear or two shed.

The Cambridgeshire team wanted to express their gratitude and thank the ladies for all their support. The team kindly donated funds to help make the Charities Christmas blankets in time for children and young people who will be entering foster care over the winter months. This will include babies, sibling groups, teenagers, parent & child placements and unaccompanied asylum seeking children. 

All the quilters are volunteers and simply love sewing and making quilts, after speaking to them, it became clear that living rooms, spare bedrooms and even garages are dedicated to quilting.

Sheila explained that make quilts for a variety of places including PaNDR the intensive care paediatric neonatal ambulance service, incubator size quilts to shield babies’ eyes from direct light and provide a layer of warmth for them as they are in transition to SCBU or other specialist hospitals. Quilts are also made for refugee children, The Salvation Army Christmas packages the Teenage Cancer Trust to name a few.

Find out more about becoming a foster carer with our Cambridge team - Contact Us | Nexus Fostering