1 - Child Friendly Church Award

 During 2008 the young people’s group worked to obtain the child friendly church award for St Mary's.

At the parish eucharist on Sunday 1st February 2009, St Mary the Virgin - Davyhulme was presented with this award and logo to display in church by the diocesan director of education, Maurice Smith.

We are very excited about achieving this award as St Mary’s is the first church in our deanery to receive it and only the third church in the diocese to receive this award. This logo will acknowledge to any one visiting, or new to the parish that we are a family friendly and welcoming church.

We have had to complete a strict assessment procedure, and thankfully we could say yes to majority of the questions we wer asked. Working closely with the diocesan childrens officer, the Rev.Steve Dixon, we have put new strategies into place and made a few alterations to how we work with and teach the young people within St Mary’s.

In order to complete this we had to:-

• Ensure that a parish child protection policy is in place and being implemented.
• Ensure that the church buildings offer a safe environment.
• Provide on-going support and training for leaders and helpers.
• Ensure that nurture groups are provided for children and young people.
• Have opportunities where the children are included in child friendly church services.
• Ensure that suitable materials for the under fives are available in church.
• Ensure that children and young people are seen as equal members of the church community.
• Obtain and ensure feed back is obtained from the children and young people.
• Ensure that there is a vision for children’s work.
• Ensure that there are outreach opportunities.

Our young people’s church is growing stronger as the weeks pass by. The children come on a sunday morning knowing that they will meet friends old and new, have fun and learn about Gods work within a happy environment. Parents and carers are able to worship knowing their children are safe and being looked after by committed and dedicated leaders and helpers.

We are also very lucky to have a wonderful junior choir, and our very own childrens orchestra The Lantern Group, and during the last twelve months we have formed a group from the older children who have trained to be servers.

St Mary's continues in its efforts to be a Child Friendly Church where children and their parents are always made welcome.

I would like to thank everyone involved in the children’s church, organizing these events and for helping us to achieve this award for St Mary’s.

Angela May

Follow this link for full details of the Child Friendly Churches scheme in the Manchester Diocese.