BREAK
No young person should feel alone in the world. At local charity Break, they make sure they don’t.
Working across East Anglia, Break walks alongside children and young people in, around and leaving care when they’re needed most. Through fostering, residential homes, family support, mentoring and their leaving care service, they help children and young people build their confidence, create strong relationships and experience new opportunities.
Break runs a total of 12 children’s homes across Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire, including a short break home that provides a safe, warm, stable and thoughtful environment for young people with complex disabilities and needs, while giving their families some respite for what can often be intense and stressful situations.
Beyond the homes, Break have a number of different support services for all young people in their care, leaving their care or who have left their care. They offer a wellbeing service to help young people understand their emotions and develop healthy coping strategies, and friendly one-to-one support from volunteer mentors, offering guidance, encouragement and a listening ear when it’s needed.
They support those leaving their care with life skills, participation activities, tenancy support and work experience opportunities – and young people can continue to access experiences like creating podcasts, volunteering and going on wilderness retreats for as long as they like, through the charity’s lifelong opportunities team.
Break also runs its own fostering agency. As it’s not-for-profit, they reinvest every penny into giving foster carers the guidance, training and support they need to create the best opportunities for them and the young people they care for.
The team at Break are incredibly grateful to Soroptimists International King’s Lynn for being chosen Charity of the Year.
Pete Marron, Senior Projects and Partnerships Manager at Break, said: “We’re so pleased to have been selected as your Charity of the Year. As Break continues to walk alongside children and young people across the region, partnerships like this make such a meaningful difference.
“Thank you to Bea for the nomination and to all of you for selecting us — we’re very excited about working together and are truly grateful for your support of Break.”
To learn more about Break, visit: www.break-charity.org
Founders Grant
In 2023 the King’s Lynn club agreed to establish a Founders Grant in memory of two founder members—the late Pat Robinson and Elizabeth Harrison. The grant is to be awarded annually to help fund a Girl Guide with their overseas project.
We are grateful to Pat Pinnington from the Guides King’s Lynn Division who has worked in partnership with us, organising the selection of candidates. The first grant was awarded in 2
025 to celebrate 100 years of Guiding and the 50th anniversary of our club.
At our 2026 AGM we pleased to welcome back Pat Pinnington.
Two Rangers, Maddie and Ella, were the recipients of our 2025 Founders Grant and Maddie came along with Pat to tell us about her experiences on her trip to the Azores.
In the company of other guides from across the region that they had only met briefly, both girls made new friendships, coped with different languages and food and participated in all sorts of activities including kayaking, canyoning and camel riding in the desert. They were also given an insight into the local economy eg tea and pineapple growing.
They both felt that this trip had built their confidence and sparked an interest in travel and other cultures.
Ella was unable to come but sent a presentation about her adventures in Morocco.
We were pleased to present Pat with this year’s Founders Grant and look forward to hearing about another girlguiding expedition next year.