Cleft Lip & Palate Support Group (Auckland) Inc

Vision / Mission / Goals

To assist parents and caregivers of children with a cleft lip and/or palate to best meet the needs of their child and family. Provide resources to parents and caregivers of children with a cleft lip & /or palate, empowering them to make informed decisions for their family. To improve communication & understanding between parents and the medical profession. And you can look on our website under About us.

What we currently do in the way of marketing

Have had no funding to do any paid for advertising. Have had numberous personal interest stories in magazines, papers etc. Also did a book launch in 2006 which got some media coverage. Have put an add in the Legal Gazette to engender interest in donations/bequests.

Message to Students / How you can help

Our support group has traditionally been most active for families of small children. We know however that looking and sounding slightly different to other kids really affects your self esteem and so want to develop a youth programme. Our challenge is to find this age group and engage them in activities that they will find interesting & beneficial. We have some young cleft adults who have volunteered their time and energy, but have yet to take advantage of this offer.

Some thoughts to date have been to add a teenage only section to the forum for example. We are also a small group of volunteers so we want to utilise technology to make it as easy as possible to run the group, talk to kids and their families.

So we are open to suggestions.