History

In 1992 Jennie Jones,a member of a famous theatrical family,took a large consignment of medicines to Romania by bus and helped care for very deprived and abandoned children in an orphanage there.The experience for Jennie was so powerful that she decided to do something small but effective to help similarly traumatised and deprived children in Britain.

As a child Jennie had enjoyed seaside holidays in and around Little Haven in Pembrokeshire in West Wales and in later life had taken her children and then her grandchildren there.You can begin to see how energetic and resourceful Jennie is. She decided it would be a wonderful ambition to take suitably deserving children on holiday to those seaside havens to help them rest and recuperate, relax and start laughing again after traumatic experiences.And so her plan was borne and after consulting a wide variety of her family,friends and aquaintances she decided to set up a charitable trust to undertake this project.

Jennie persuaded a group of her friends and family to help her set up this Trust and some of her more famous acting colleagues and other friends to become patrons.

The Pendyffryn Trust,and shortly afterwards The Pendyffryn Children’s Trust,was set up in september 1993 and registered with the Charity Commission under number 1038140 with Jennie Jones as its founding and first Director.The name Pendyffryn actually comes from a fine house in Little Haven, sea view terrace is the approximate English translation, and which we admired and might if circumstances had been different accomodated the children there.

Jennie quickly found friends and helpers and some money and in the summer of 1994 spent some weeks at Walton West Farmhouse  in Little Haven,Pembrokeshire owned by Fred and Jane Smithson who have been very generous and supportive of the Trust.This started us in our work looking after traumatised children and their families and helping them recuperate in a happy seaside environment.That simple concept has been adapted and enlarged in succeeding years.

A wide group of referring agencies was established over the years that followed.We looked after children who had suffered physical or emotional trauma as a result of civil war in Bosnia, genocide in Rwanda, who had been born with serious congenital disorders or who had contracted serious and life threatening illnesses and diseases.Some were refugees and most had been treated in our leading childrens hospitals including the John Radcliffe in Oxford.

The care we provided to these children during their seaside holidays was not specialist care.Although some of the volunteers who Jennie recruited were doctors or nurses,the children were predominantly cared for by their parents or sometimes visiting professional carers.

A great deal of work was done by Jennie and her volunteers in the intervening 16 years.Although the identity of volunteers,Trustees and Patrons has changed over the years the scope and concept of our work has not.In 2009 Jennie Jones decided to retire as Director of the Trust and hand over the reins to some of her volunteer and Trustee colleagues who have continued this important and valuable work inspired by her original vision.

In summer 2010 we took children for the first time to Timber Hill near Broad Haven in Pembrokeshire with the same success as we had achieved in earlier years.The staff and other current details about the work of the Trust is found elsewhere in this website.