As with many such organisations, The Splash Project was established when one of our first volunteers experienced the loss of her first baby. She wanted to use the experience of her loss to help others in the same situation as herself, but at that time, there was no support available. 18 months later, after she helped to support a friend through the loss of her baby, The Splash Project was born, and has been running ever since.

When looking for somewhere to hold meetings, we were offered the free use of one of the rooms at the Culdrose Community Centre, although our first volunteers were not in the Navy themselves.

The Culdrose Community Centre is an interface between the Naval families in the area of Helston, and the non-Naval community it exists in. The Team running the Community Centre were made aware of the lack of support available for families who have had problems in pregnancy and lost a baby as a result, and they were very happy to offer their support to The Splash Project.

It is in fact from our Naval Connection that we have derived the 'Seahawk' part of our name. (Without using Seahawk as our 'S' we would perhaps be called The Plash Project!....)This does not however mean that we are exclusively for Navy families - far from it. However we do recognise that particularly for the Naval community, pregnancy loss can be isolating, because Naval families are often posted many miles from family and friends, and when a loss happens there can be no family support. This can be especially the case if a husband or partner is posted at a different base, or abroad.

We have a number of volunteers who worked at the Hospital currently, or have done so in the past, and it is through them that we have a connection to the Hospital. We have assisted with the planning of the Hospital's Baby Memorial Service over the last 3 years, and are proud of the fact that we have been able to help the Hospital to improve the bereavement service it offers to parents who have lost their babies.

We have also been involved with helping to train medical students and midwives in dealing with baby death and its impact.

We are a not-for-profit organisation, and have chosen at this point in time not to pursue registration as a charity. This is because we are aware of the amount of paperwork involved in the registration process, and at the current time would rather use this time in development of the organisation. Should it become necessary to register as a charity for our work to continue in the future, we will pursue this at that point in time.

Our first meeting was in the Summer of 2006, and we have continued meeting regularly since then, on the First Monday of every month (missing only two since our start - one when the first monday fell on New Year's Day and the other when snow paralysed the whole of Cornwall, and our volunteers were unable to get out to the Community Centre). We have helped a number of people and families since then, sometimes face to face, sometimes over the phone, or by mail, sometimes by a combination of all these.

We have added facets to the services we offer, following approaches for help from people who need advice, support and help in other directions, including neonatal problems, pregnancy problems, and problems with conceiving.

Each time we have expanded the services we offer, it has been carefully considered, to ensure that the core support we offer is not affected. In all cases the skills used to support those affected by these additional facets of loss are those we already have, so we are pleased to be able to expand the range of services we can offer.

We plan to continue meeting for the forseeable future, and continue the support work we offer.

We have recently updated both our leaflet, and website, and we are really pleased with the new look it offers us.

Our main object is to be there if we are needed by families; and if we can continue to do so, we are well pleased.

We will continue to help Treliske in whatever way we can to support families.