Both Foster Care Matters and Adoption Matters were delighted to participate in Time to Talk Day, a campaign which is spearheaded by a collaboration between the Mind charity and the Co-op to highlight the importance of talking about mental health.

On Thursday 6 February 2025, staff from Adoption Matters and Foster Care Matters attended the Co-op’s Penketh store in Warrington in a bid to encourage people to consider adoption and fostering.

The team were also on hand to speak to shoppers about ACE, which stands for Adverse Childhood Experiences.

Annie O’Neill, Adoption Matters Fundraising and Relationship Manager, shared:

“It was great that my colleague Karen, our Fostering Service Manager at Foster Care Matters, and I were invited to be part of the Time to Talk campaign. The campaign promotes such an important topic, and it has so much potential to change, and save, lives.

“We were delighted to be given the opportunity to talk about adoption and fostering and we had quite a few people stopping by – it was a great collaboration to spread awareness of so many important subjects.”

Stuart Mackay, who is the Co-op’s community lead in the North West said:

“Time to Talk Day is an important collaboration between the Mind charity and the Co-op to highlight the need to give space to have open discussions and make people feel welcome and able to have a chat – it is vital that we all have space to talk about mental health but also an opportunity to talk about other topics that we normally feel we struggle to talk about.

“Having Karen and Annie represent the discussions about adoption and foster care is key to helping people share experiences, ask questions about the process, or even get a better understanding of what people experience.

“Being at the Co-op talking with members was amazing to see all these topics come up and people feeling comfortable to talk about them.

“Many thanks to Adoption Matters and Foster Care Matters for being part of Time to Talk Day at the Co-op in Penketh.”

If you would like to find out more about fostering, then please click here and contact us – we would love to hear from you.

For any adoption enquiries, then please visit our Adoption Matters website.

You can find out more about the Time to Talk campaign here