Kilmelford gig boosts fundraising for Freya
WELL-WISHERS have helped a family raise more than £3,000 for a special helmet to reshape a baby girl’s skull.
A gig by local blues band Mudslide on Saturday in Kimelford Village Hall raised £899, rocketing Gemma and Allan Strang’s appeal over its £3,000 target.
Gemma, mum to six-monthold Freya, said: ‘To all the folk who have donated for Freya’s continuing treatment for Flat Head Syndrome, we couldn’t do it without your help. It means so much.’
The family’s JustGiving page raised £1,091.29 after an appeal featured in The Oban Times and another £1,000 came from the Scottish Fire & Rescue Service Family Support Trust. Gemma and Allan are both volunteer firefighters.
The Freemasons in Oban also made a donation and pupils at Kilninver Primary School had a pyjama day which raised £52.25 for Freya.
Money from Saturday’s gig will now be split between Freya’s helmet fund and Headstart4babies, a charity supporting other families such as the Strangs. Freya has two severe types of flat head syndrome – plagiocephaly and brachycephaly.
The helmet treatment she needed was not available on the NHS and the family needed £3,000 to pay for it in instalments and to fund their travel to the special private clinic run by Technology In Motion at Bothwell Church Centre, near Hamilton. One in 25 babies are affected by the syndrome, although nine out of 10 cases, which are not classed as severe, will go back to normal without medical intervention.
Freya’s diagnosis was so severe her family feared it could put her at risk of bullying and depression when she got older. Now the Strang family has the money to pay off the helmet in full, they will keep up lobbying the NHS to offer the TiMband helmet treatments across the UK.
Freya still needs to wear the helmet for another four months and is having monthly check-ups.
The tot, who has a five-yearold brother Ryan, was about four-months-old when she first started wearing it.