Our CEO talks about 25 years of Tommy’s

The Tommy’s Awards have been around for as long as the charity itself, and this year we are celebrating our 25th anniversary! We hope you will join us in celebrating all those wonderful people who go above and beyond to help people in need.

Tommy’s blog, 24/02/2017, by CEO Jane Brewin

On 24th March we will once again host the Tommy’s Awards which are now in their 25th year and have been running as long as Tommy’s has been around.

Together Tommy’s and the Tommy’s awards will celebrate their 25th birthday this year.

At the awards we’ll be celebrating all that we’ve achieved over the years to make pregnancy and birth safer for everyone; we are the only organisation in the UK which focuses on funding medical research to prevent miscarriage, preterm birth and stillbirth.

Tommy’s centres have pioneered specialist services for those parents at risk of pre-term birth, a model now copied and developed in over 20 centres around the UK, helping many parents each year to have a healthy baby.

These centres now form a pre-term birth network where they work together to accelerate research into best practice clinical practice which makes the UK a world leader in care to these parents.

Tommy’s fund the only stillbirth research centre in the UK and we have been actively involved in the Government’s objective to reduce stillbirth here in the UK – it’s working!

Stillbirth is reducing and if we keep up the focus I can foresee a time when stillbirth will be a very rare event indeed.

Tommy’s fund the only miscarriage research centre in the UK which we opened in April 2016 so it’s not yet a year old – progress is already happening to care for parents affected and to pioneer screening and treatments for parents – it looks likely that both men and women are equally important in finding the answers to this distressing issue so watch this space.

I’m glad to say that we are helping over 24,000 parents each year in this new centre with many finding our specialist clinics and booking themselves in!

The Tommy’s awards celebrate all these achievements and thank all the companies and individuals who have made this all possible, so we are delighted to make awards to companies who go that extra mile to make life easier for parents with babies and small children.

Our awards are voted for by parents and there is not greater accolade than their support for companies doing a great job.

In recent years we have also focussed on the very human side of pregnancy loss, and we celebrate all those amazing people who have helped to make those losses bearable and helped parents to have the healthy baby they so much long for.

It is an afternoon of tears, laughter, sadness and happiness but above all a life affirming and uplifting experience.

We salute all those wonderful people who go above and beyond to help people in need.

I hope you will join with us in congratulating all the winners and everyone who has taken part – they are all winners to us!