The Struggles and Joy as a Carer

We started Katharina’s story in Part One and here we are catching up with her to capture her positive approach to life. She tells us of her joy as a carer. You may recall, Katharina and her son Jan, are the first international carer family to visit Kingham Cottage. We are proud to continue her […]

After Umbrage Welcomes First International Carer Family

This month, After Umbrage welcomed our first international carer family to Kingham Cottage. Katharina and her eldest son, Jan are from Berlin. They heard about us via a Facebook Group for parents whose children suffer with the same rare chromosome disorder as Katharina’s son, Mattis. Life at home is stressful caring for Mattis and Katharina’s […]

‘I love being part of the After Umbrage story’

Vanda Rorbach, beneficiary of After Umbrage, became a carer for her Mum, Lynne, six years ago. Lynne has frontal temporal dementia and last year was diagnosed with cancer. Her Mum has never smoked and doesn’t drink so it was a huge shock. As a very active woman all her life – sometimes holding down two jobs […]

National Stress Awareness Day

National Stress Awareness Day provides people with an opportunity to think about their wellbeing and find advice or support on managing stress. This year it falls on Wednesday 6th November. There will be a lot of information available online that day. It will focus on helping us recognise what’s making us stressed. The advice will be to […]

Carers’ wellbeing gets a 100% improvement

The purpose of After Umbrage, the charity caring for those who care, is to boost carers’ wellbeing. We measure this by talking to our beneficiaries and running an annual survey. This year they tell us that after their free break at Kingham Cottage their wellbeing improved by 100%.  Largely, we anticipate the feedback that a […]

Grateful for our hospice friends and keen to make more

In 2014, we opened the doors of Kingham Cottage to carers and we started making connections with hospices around the country. We link with Family Support Teams, Nurses and Communications Teams so that we can meet carers and welcome them to our cottage for a free respite break. The people we know at hospices become our […]

Three activities that reduce stress

Hallelujah! Today is National Stress Awareness Day which is a perfect excuse to share the notion that we have wonderful, powerful tools for boosting our wellbeing and reducing stress. You are probably doing many of them already without realising the neuroscience behind the benefits to your emotional health. Here’s the science bit in brief. Stress is […]