Daniel’s mum, Vivienne, is calling on all those aged 16-30 to join the register run by the charity Anthony Nolan, which is the largest register in the UK.

Daniel was diagnosed with severe aplastic anaemia in September last year. His only chance of a cure is a bone marrow transplant from a donor with a matching tissue type. His consultants are calling on Anthony Nolan to find him a perfect match.

His diagnosis came out of the blue last year. During the August bank holiday weekend, strange bruises started to appear on his body, but Daniel’s parents put this down to him being an active little boy. ‘It was only when the nosebleeds started and I saw him looking pale, that I began to wonder what was going on,’ dad Mark said. Blood tests confirmed he had severe aplastic anaemia.

He’s a keen performer, and was due to appear in a production of Peter Pan at Christmas, but this had to be put on hold, along with his favourite activities of swimming and football, while he underwent urgent treatment, including regular transfusions.

‘On transfusion days, Daniel is immobile and then he’s shattered afterwards’, Vivienne says, ‘He’s also neutropenic which means we have to be so careful of any chances of him catching an infection which could further compromise his immune system.’

July was the last time Daniel was at school with his friends. Vivienne adds, ‘he loved school, which is why it’s so sad to see him cooped up because of his illness. The other week he was well enough to pop in for a few hours and the difference was amazing. It gave him a slice of normality which is so precious.’

Lynsey Dickson, Regional Recruitment Manager at Anthony Nolan, says: ‘Daniel needs a bone marrow transplant to give him the chance of a cure, but currently we can’t find a match for everyone who needs one. We need to grow our register of donors to make more matches and save more lives.’

Vivienne Chesterman, adds: ‘I want to call on anyone aged 16-30 to join the Anthony Nolan bone marrow register. Joining is so simple, you just need to fill in a quick online form and provide a saliva sample. Take ten minutes out of your day to give people like Daniel a fighting chance.’

It costs £100 to recruit, tissue type and keep each new bone marrow donor on our register. You can help recruit more donors and find more matches for people like Dan by donating through your payroll to Anthony Nolan.

To find out more about joining the register, visit www.anthonynolan.org/donating

Support the work of Anthony Nolan with a monthly donation from pay.

Serve up a wonderful Wimbledon with Workplace Giving UK’s ready made party in a box, worth £350. The offer is valid for every employee who signs up to give to charity from their pay until midnight on Wednesday 3^rd July, just in time for the All England Club Finals weekend!

Breakthrough Breast Cancer’s Head of Public Health Eluned Hughes said: “It’s hard to unpick the individual factors that are helping us in the fight against breast cancer; declining death rates from the disease are likely due to a combination of better diagnosis, improved treatments, and – thanks to screening – earlier detection.

“There are clear limitations to this study, one of the most significant being it didn’t compare mortality rates for women who chose to attend with those that did not, making the benefit of screening on mortality difficult to determine.

“Of course the decision of whether to attend screening remains a personal one for each individual, but this study does not alter our view that screening should be made available to all women over the age of 50 who want it – and earlier for those whose breast cancer risk is higher. It’s important that women have all the information available to them on the pros and cons of screening in order to make an informed choice that’s right for them.

“A thorough, independent review by a panel of experts last year concluded that breast screening saves around 1,300 women’s lives a year. Breakthrough believes this gives us the clearest picture of the need for the NHS breast screening programme, and we encourage all women to attend their breast screening appointments.”

Support the ongoing work of Breakthrough Breast Cancer with a monthly donation from pay.

Serve up a wonderful Wimbledon with Workplace Giving UK’s ready made party in a box, worth £350. The offer is valid for every employee who signs up to give to charity from their pay until midnight on Wednesday 3^rd July, just in time for the All England Club Finals weekend!

Celebrate the most prestigious tennis event of the year with our readymade party in a box worth £350.  Everything you need to serve up a fabulous time on the All England Club Finals weekend including those all important strawberries and cream!

We hope you want to join in the fun and also the spirit of this great sporting celebration, so why not sign up to give a regular donation to your favourite charity straight from your pay and be in with a chance of winning everything you will need for your own Wonderful Wimbledon Party.

This readymade party in a box is worth £350 and includes; £150 M&S voucher (for your strawberries and cream and other party food!), £50 JD Sports voucher,  2 x bottles of champagne, 2 x bottles of Pimms, 2 x bottles of pink lemonade, Swingball, green party bunting , 2 x novelty tennis mugs, green napkins, ennis sandwich flags …and a Cliff Richard CD for a sing along when rain stops play!

The offer is valid for every employee who signs up to give to ANY charity from their pay until midnight on Wednesday 3rd July, just in time for the All England Club Finals weekend!

Already giving to charity via pay?  Then as a thank you, we would be happy to include you in this prize draw, simply email your name/ employer name and a contact number to info@workplacegiving-uk.co.uk.  Please note we will need to have received your details by email before midnight on 3^rd July 2013.

Good luck and enjoy the strawberries and cream!!  Terms and Conditions can be found here.

Elijah, who met Andy today at Queen’s Club during the Aegon Championships, was not only given the opportunity to watch Andy train…he also got to actually play with the No. 2 seed! He was then introduced to Andy’s close friend, Ross Hutchins, who himself is battling Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, before they took their seats to watch the centre court action.

Elijah, who is from London, was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia (ALL) in February 2010 following a lung scan and bone marrow test. He endured a course of intensive chemotherapy followed by maintenance chemotherapy, which he finished last month. Elijah plays tennis frequently with a local club but had to stop for a while during treatment which his mum, Catherine, described as very frustrating for him, as he dreams of one day becoming a professional tennis player.

She said: “When we found out that Elijah had ALL I didn’t want to believe it – when you hear the word ‘cancer’ you become very frightened. Although the treatment stopped him playing as much, tennis has really helped to take his mind off everything that he’s had to go through.”

Elijah’s Dad, Tito Ortiz-Ochoa, who accompanied Elijah today, said: “I’m speechless for all the efforts that have been put into making my son’s wish a reality. Elijah was amazed, nervous and thrilled – so many emotions flared up in such a short time that Elijah was in mute mode for a second! But when Andy approached him with such kindness it broke the ice and it all went marvellously.”

After meeting Andy Elijah said: “I’m really, really, really happy; it’s been amazing!”

Andy Murray said: “It was a real pleasure to meet Elijah who is a keen and talented young tennis player. Despite going through a tough few years it’s clear he’s remained very dedicated.  We had a knock-up on the practice court and he certainly put me through my paces!”

There are currently 20,000 children and young people in the UK fighting life-threatening conditions. Make-A-Wish will grant more than 1,100 wishes in 2013, and needs to raise £7 million to achieve this. The charity receives no government funding or lottery grants – so every donation really does count.

Support the work of Make-A-Wish with a regular donation from your pay.

Serve up a wonderful Wimbledon with Workplace Giving UK’s ready made party in a box, worth £350. The offer is valid for every employee who signs up to give to charity from their pay until midnight on Wednesday 3^rd July, just in time for the All England Club Finals weekend!

The figures also show a 14% rise in the number of people living in B&Bs. Shelter is warning that cuts to the housing safety net, added to the rising cost of housing, are already having a real impact.

B&B-style accommodation often means a single room for an entire family with no cooking facilities and a shared bathroom, sometimes miles away from their jobs and support networks. Though there is a legal requirement limiting this to six weeks for families, many have to stay in this situation for weeks, or even months.

Shelter is also worried that today’s figures mask a further group of ‘hidden homeless’; families who have lost their home but may not be counted in official statistics due to recent changes in the way councils handle homelessness applications.

Just one small thing, like an illness, can tip a family into homelessness. Amy experienced this first-hand when her partner lost his job and they were unable to pay rent. They had to live in a B&B with their 7-month-old baby, staying in a single room with no cooking facilities for 10 weeks. Amy found it impossible to care for her baby properly as she couldn’t sterilise the feeding bottles, or heat up baby food.

Amy came to Shelter for help and our advisers helped to permanently house the family. They are now living in a flat and finally feel settled. Amy said: ‘It was very traumatic for us, and I hated having no choice but to live somewhere without the facilities to properly look after my baby.’

While cuts to the housing safety net are already hitting families hard, there are more to come, including the overall benefit cap to be implemented between April and September 2013.

These cuts could leave councils unable to pay for temporary accommodation for homeless families. As a result, even more families could be placed in B&B-style accommodation miles away from their jobs, schools and support networks.

Campbell Robb, Chief Executive of Shelter, said: ‘Behind these numbers are thousands of families up and down the country who have lost the battle to stay in their homes.

‘Shelter advisers are hearing from families every day who are at breaking point and simply cannot make their money go far enough.

Support the work of Shelter with a monthly donation from pay.

Serve up a wonderful Wimbledon with Workplace Giving UK’s ready made party in a box, worth £350. The offer is valid for every employee who signs up to give to charity from their pay until midnight on Wednesday 3^rd July, just in time for the All England Club Finals weekend!

When disaster hits, children don’t have much to fall back on — especially when they are underweight and fragile to begin with. In the country’s south, thousands of them currently face malnutrition.

Action Against Hunger has helped across the area to contain this acute malnutrition crisis, treating more than 6,500 children on the brink of starvation since the beginning of the year.

Treating malnutrition’s symptoms alone is not enough. Action Against Hunger is providing Congolese families with lasting solutions to hunger — with seeds and tools, training in agricultural techniques to improve productivity and access to activities that will generate income well into the future.

In the village of Kibenga, Mabamungo Ruzuba lost all her working and gardening tools during recent conflicts in the area. Without these tools, she was unable to support her husband, grandmother and five children. In addition to providing her with tools and enough seeds for this year’s harvest, Action Against Hunger showed Mabamungo and her neighbours how to increase their crop yields.

“What gave me great joy were the seeds that ACF gave me for the 2009 planting season. Action Against Hunger gave us hope by giving us tools and seeds,” Mabamungo said. “The ACF representatives showed us how to save a part of the crops for future seasons, which I’ve done.

With what we’ve learned, if Action Against Hunger were to leave I would use the techniques they taught me, and I would be able to live.”

Last June, Action Against Hunger supplied Papa Bangoi who was struggling to support his family, with eggplant, tomato, amaranth and spinach saplings, a rake and a water hose, as well as training on how to plant a garden.

So far, the garden has produced three harvests and allowed the family to use their limited income on their children’s school fees. “Around this time last year I was buying vegetables at the market, but this year I was able to save money,” Papa Bangoi said. “Now I have some for the kids’ school, which is great because the new school year is just around the corner.”

Support the work of Action Against Hunger with a monthly donation from pay

Serve up a wonderful Wimbledon with Workplace Giving UK’s ready made party in a box, worth £350. The offer is valid for every employee who signs up to give to charity from their pay until midnight on Wednesday 3^rd July, just in time for the All England Club Finals weekend!

The research, which looked retrospectively at the case notes of 1127 patients who died under the care of the Marie Curie Hospice Edinburgh in 2009 and 2010, reveals that three quarters (77 per cent) of patients receiving specialist palliative care were willing to discuss their preferences for where they would like to die.

Current evidence suggests that, when asked, most people would choose home as their preferred place of death, with very few choosing to die in hospital. But, preferences of the general population are not necessarily representative of people who are terminally ill. In this study, most people who had never spent time as an inpatient in the hospice wanted to die at home (79 per cent), whilst the majority of those who had been an inpatient– even if they had only been admitted once – wanted to die at the hospice (80 per cent). Researchers believe that this may be because patients in the hospice had more complex needs and/or less social support than those never admitted, or it may because they were familiar with the hospice and the staff.

Fewer than one per cent of patients said that they wanted to die in hospital, but those who did not nominate a preferred place of death were nearly three times more likely to die there than those whose preferences were known.

Some 21 per cent of patients had a documented reason for why preferred place of death wasn’t recorded. This was most often because the healthcare professional considered it inappropriate to ask, either because they had not known the patient for long enough or were concerned about causing the patient too much distress. In other cases, patients were undecided, felt that the place was unimportant, had cognitive impairment or were unable to communicate. Only 15 per cent of patients who did not specify a preferred place of death were unwilling to have this discussion.

Dr David Oxenham, Medical Director of the Marie Curie Hospice Edinburgh, and one of the authors, said: “Our study shows that the vast majority of patients receiving specialist palliative care services are open to having conversations about their end of life care preferences and wishes – and that the services we provide support their choice. We hope these findings encourage those caring for people with terminal illness to feel more comfortable talking about death. The more that we know about where and how patients would like to be cared for; the greater the chance of meeting their wishes – a key priority of end of life care.”

Support the ongoing work of Marie Curie Cancer Care with a monthly donation from pay.

Serve up a wonderful Wimbledon with Workplace Giving UK’s ready made party in a box, worth £350. The offer is valid for every employee who signs up to give to charity from their pay until midnight on Wednesday 3^rd July, just in time for the All England Club Finals weekend!

The charity warns this will put huge pressure on the NHS and see a surge in demand for cancer support charities such as Macmillan.

The new figures, analysing existing data, found that the proportion of people in the UK who will get cancer in their life has increased by more than a third over the past 20 years. In 1992, around one in three people (32%) who died that year had been diagnosed with cancer at some point in their life. By 2010, this had risen to more than four in 10 (44%). And the proportion will continue to rise to be almost one in two (47%) by 2020.

Today, more than one in three (35%) of those people who die having had a cancer diagnosis will now die from other causes. This is up from one in five (21%) 20 years ago. By 2020 this will improve further to almost four in 10 people (38%).

This means the number of people who get cancer but die from another cause has doubled over the past 20 years. In 1992, around 45,000 cancer patients died from other causes; by 2010 this increased to around 90,000. The most common other causes of death aside from cancer are as follows: one in five (20%) die from ischaemic heart disease; another one in five (20%) die from respiratory disease; and around one in eight (12%) die from cerebrovascular disease such as stroke.

The growth in the number of people getting cancer is due to overall improvement in life expectancy (i.e. as the population ages the incidence of cancer rises). The reduction in the proportion of those diagnosed who die of their cancer is because of a greater focus on early diagnosis, advances in cancer treatments and better cancer care.

Though the survival trend is encouraging, there is growing evidence that many cancer patients do not return to full health after gruelling treatments and the serious side effects of the disease.

Professor Jane Maher, Chief Medical Officer, Macmillan Cancer Support, says:  ’That we live longer as a nation, and that we are improving cancer treatment, are things to celebrate. We do, however, need to add a serious note of caution: the more successful we are with treatment and cure, the more people we have living with the long-term effects of cancer and its treatment.

‘Many patients can be left with physical health and emotional problems long after treatment has ended. People struggle with fatigue, pain, immobility, or an array of other troublesome side-effects. We need to manage these consequences for the sake of the patient, but also for the sake of the taxpayer. We should plan to have more services to help people stay well at home, rather than waiting until they need hospital treatment.’

Ciarán Devane, Chief Executive, Macmillan Cancer Support, says: ’Because of the progress in healthcare – ironically largely for conditions other than cancer – in only seven years time nearly half the population will get cancer in their lifetime. This poses a herculean challenge for the NHS and for society.

‘The NHS will not be able to cope with the huge increase in demand for cancer services without a fundamental shift towards proper after-care, without more care delivered in the community, and without engaging cancer patients in their own health. Until then, the help and support that organisations like Macmillan provide will become even more urgent and important to ensure no one faces cancer alone.’

Support the work of Macmillan Cancer Support with a monthly donation from pay.

Serve up a wonderful Wimbledon with Workplace Giving UK’s ready made party in a box, worth £350. The offer is valid for every employee who signs up to give to charity from their pay until midnight on Wednesday 3^rd July, just in time for the All England Club Finals weekend!

Sarah took poor Lady, who is 15 months old, to the PDSA PetAid hospital in Old Trafford. PDSA vet, James Fairs, said, “An x-ray revealed some abdominal anomalies although it wasn’t possible to make a definite diagnosis. But when we examined her abdomen we could definitely feel a thickening of the intestines.

“Lady was still relatively bright, but as she wasn’t eating or keeping anything down. We needed to do an operation to examine her internally and find out what the problem was. We were all quite shocked when we pulled an entire lolly stick out of her intestines!”

At four-and-a-half inches, the lolly stick was almost as long as petite Lady’s body, and vets were amazed that the stick hadn’t caused any serious internal damage. James continued: “We cannot be sure when Lady swallowed the lolly stick, but if it had been left untreated it could have pierced her intestines, causing potentially fatal peritonitis so Lady is a very lucky girl.”

Sarah added: “We couldn’t believe it when they told us they’d found a whole lolly stick inside her. We’ve no idea where she got it from, or how and when she ate it. It’s a complete mystery, but we’re just glad to have her home safe again. I did go out and check all round the garden though, just to make sure there was nothing else harmful there she might eat.”

Thankfully Lady has made a full recovery, to the relief of the whole family, said Sarah: “My daughter Ellie (6) was so upset when Lady had to go to the hospital I can’t thank PDSA enough for saving her life and all the hard work they do, Ellie is delighted to have her playmate back and they were back running around together in no time.”

PDSA provides free veterinary care for the sick and injured pets of eligible people in need and is funded entirely by the generous support of the public.  Support the work of PDSA with a monthly donation from pay.

Serve up a wonderful Wimbledon with Workplace Giving UK’s ready made party in a box, worth £350. The offer is valid for every employee who signs up to give to charity from their pay until midnight on Wednesday 3^rd July, just in time for the All England Club Finals weekend!

Described as the natural equivalent of listed buildings; they’ve stood for hundreds of years and witnessed historic events while watching silently in the background. The  11 metre girthed Big Belly Oak in Wiltshire’s  Savernake Forest,  which has stood since the time of William the Conqueror, is one of 115,000 trees on the charity’s database of ancient veteran and notable trees.

Given its recent swift and devastating impact on the UK’s trees, ash dieback has been well reorrted in the press. But there are at least 15 known diseases and pests that pose an immediate threat to the UK’s trees. These include Acute oak decline and the oak processionary moth, Phytopthora Kernoviae which affects oak and beech, and Dothistroma needle blight which affects Scots pine.

The Woodland Trust is this month (June) holding a conference with some of the top minds in conservation, forestry and tree health to find a way forward for our country’s trees and woods. But there’s a role we can all play, says head of conservation at the Woodland Trust Austin Brady: “We need the public to help by getting into the great outdoors, looking at trees and checking them for signs of disease, so we have as accurate a picture of the situation as possible.”

At this time of year one of the easiest ways to see if a tree is suffering from ash dieback is to look at a young branch and scratch a little of the bark off, if it is green underneath the tree is healthy, if it is brown it is not. Watch out for wilting on the leaves, which may throughout the summer become more blackened but still stay on the branch, diamond-shape lesions on the trunk or a balding crown.

Support the work of the Woodland Trust with a donation from pay.

Serve up a wonderful Wimbledon with Workplace Giving UK’s ready made party in a box, worth £350. The offer is valid for every employee who signs up to give to charity from their pay until midnight on Wednesday 3^rd July, just in time for the All England Club Finals weekend!