Glasgow Children’s Holiday Scheme
In the mid 1960s Tricia McConalogue was an 11-year-old girl living in the Gorbals. Her father worked as a bricklayer but money was tight and the family could not afford an annual holiday.
Like many other families, they would manage a day away from time to time but in the main, Tricia rarely strayed far from the streets around her home.
All that changed thanks to Lilias Graham, a social worker for the Scottish Episcopal Church who worked in the Gorbals.
She knew many families lived with poverty, illness and unemployment and believed getting them out of the city for a week would improve their health and wellbeing.
Lilias set up a network of families across the country willing to take in youngsters and give them the chance of a holiday.
Tricia was one of the first to benefit from the scheme and one summer day in 1967 she set off alone on a train journey to Oban.
She was met by Lady Cunningham and her two Labrador dogs who took her to her cottage on Mull where the youngster spent two weeks on her first ever break from her family.
Tricia believes the experiences she enjoyed on her holidays helped her to stretch her ambitions.
Today she is director of the Bridging the Gap charity in the Gorbals and a couple of years ago was awarded an MBE for her work.
The project which took her from the poverty she experienced as a child in the Gorbals is now called Glasgow Children’s Holiday Scheme.
In the 60 years it has been running, it has taken tens of thousands of children on holiday. It still has a network of families willing to give youngsters a badly needed break but now has six caravans where whole families can enjoy time together.
Last year alone, 489 children and 356 adults from 214 families benefitted thanks to a stay in caravans in Wemyss Bay and Fife.
• Full story at the Glasgow Evening Times.
