That time of year has come again, when I write to invite you to join me at Royal Wimbledon GC on Wednesday 23rd September for a day's golf and a Gala lunch to raise money for Down's South London, the charity dedicated to providing speech and language therapy to children with Down's Syndrome who live in the Southern half of Greater London.

As usual, we are looking to have a fun day out and a good lunch with some decent prizes and a bit of an auction.

An introduction for you, or reminder for those who know already, about DSL’s activities and what such generous support over the years has allowed us to achieve:

• It was set up as a voluntary organisation in 1998 by an enterprising group of parents in Peckham whose children lacked any real access to speech and language therapy in their borough.

• Today, DSL is a thriving charity and provides a vital service to 30-35 children and their families from across South London.

• We provide weekly intensive therapy and support parents and carers, helping to educate them as to how best to help progress the speech and language development of children with Down's Syndrome further.

• This speech therapy is complemented by physio and occupational therapy, to help the children build their strength and independence.

Everything is, ultimately focused on helping the children to accelerate their development so that they can be integrated as easily as possible into their school communities and society as a whole.

The service costs over £90,000 a year to run and is funded entirely from donations and cash raised by parents.

As you can imagine, the children come from families with a wide range of circumstances – inevitably those from the least advantaged backgrounds need this support the most and have the lowest propensity to afford any self-funded therapies or raise the required funding. The Peckham base from which the charity works focuses most of DSL’s resources on them.

Children receive personalised treatment, in both individual and group sessions and we are able to give them a breadth and depth of input that is significantly greater than previously ever achieved and remains generally unavailable to children with Down’s Syndrome. We have continued with our programme of parental support groups, hosting parents of current and former patients to discuss all manner of aspects of developmental opportunities, school relationships, mentoring and general emotional support. More than that, we have also been able to make great inroads into our waiting list, inviting another six new families to join. Perhaps most excitingly in the last 12 months, we have deployed an objective development measuring tool (Bayley Scales). The children have all been measured once and we will now be able to track annual progress as real evidence of the difference DSL’s therapy support makes.

We continue to share experience and provide resources to support families as they go through the traumatic process of getting the first Statutory Statement of Educational Needs for their children - the legal agreement with the local authority that governs the child's support and care package. Again, those from the least advantaged backgrounds tend to get the worst outcomes and do not have the means to seek legal advice. We are also going to launch a website, with one of its objectives being to consolidate leading practice and support resources for parents.

The coming 12 months require a renewed focus on our fundraising activities. It will not surprise you learn that we are having to battle incredibly hard to maintain service levels in line with the last couple of years, so your support is ever more greatly appreciated.

On that note, I'd be delighted if you could join me for what promises to be another great day out. The day's format will be familiar to those of you who have been able to make in the past:

0730 – registration:     bacon sandwich breakfast and mulligan / Golden Gimmie / etc sale

0830 – tee off:               18 holes team stableford

1230 – lunch:                  full Royal Wimbledon finery with wine, prizes and (small) auction

I remain acutely conscious that everybody is taking ever more care with how they invest their charitable donations, so some details for you as to where your money is spent.

Every £3,500 that we can raise will provide a free total therapy care package for a local child that is: 

1. unavailable anywhere else in the country

2. provided for free to children from the age of three months - starting this young has a real impact on future speech development as does, amazingly, the impact of OT and PT

3. in great demand, as witnessed by DSL's increasing waiting list and approaches from people outside our catchment area

4. accessible in particular by those in society who are less fortunate socio-economically and who need such support, perhaps, more than any other group of our members.

Prices remain the same as for the very first DSL golf day in 2007: £250 per person / £1,000 per team of four players (players are welcome individually, as a team of friends or as a corporate group) to include golf, prizes and an excellent lunch. As has become something of a tradition in the last couple of years, we would also be delighted to welcome guests to join us for lunch only, for which I ask a donation of £50. As with prior years, I will donate the actual costs of the day so that all funds raised will be for the direct benefit of the charity.

Spaces are limited, so do please let me know asap (please email me at: andrew.aylwin@btinternet.com) if you are going to consider Down’s South London as one of the charities you would like to support in 2014, whether on a personal or a corporate basis – don’t forget that it is also a great networking opportunity!

Finally, if anybody has any auction items or experiences, etc that they might consider donating to the day, do please let me know!

Thank you all for your support.