Our history

1996 - 1999: Launch

Uniting Friends was launched by Russell Lerner in October 1996 as part of the Daybreak Barnardo project to support young people in transition to adult services. Its focus was to create a befriending and advocacy service. The organisation was always focused, as it is today, to be user led, involving its service users in the development and delivery of its services. There were just three members of staff at the beginning.

1999 - 2002: Partnership

Uniting Friends was in a partnership with Redbridge Mencap until early 2002.

2002 - present: Independence

In September 2002, the service gained independent charitable status and created a management board. It is run by CEO Russell Lerner and a team of 28 people. It currently operates a large and busy innovative day opportunities service, an evening and weekend befriending service, a ground to fork allotment project, a nightclub and radio show.

Notable Milestones

May 2006 - Uniting Friends has always been in the forefront towards promoting the rights of people with learning disabilities and in May 2006, following a service user being discriminated in a local pub, it supported a case with the Disability Rights Commission and a service user which resulted in record damages being awarded. This case led the way nationally for others cases to challenge other companies that break the law.

More than Friends - Over the years Uniting Friends has created many ground breaking projects including a dating agency called More Than Friends. Over 200 members had dates, with 68 members experiencing love for the first time. 42 long term relationships flourished leading to two engagements.

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You can watch more about our history as part of a film made for our 21st anniversary celebrations. Read more about our 21st anniversary here.

Latest

UF Radio - May 2022: "My Eye Is My Ear"

11 million people in the UK are deaf or hard of hearing. One of them is the Queen. Deaf people are more likely to have poor mental health. This month, the members have been discussing the awareness of deafness and how best to communicate with people who have hearing loss or are totally deaf. We had a guest speaker who invited the group to ask her questions about deafness. With the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations upon us, we have also been sending our messages to the Queen.
UF Radio - April 2022: "Nothing About Us Without Us"

With local elections on our doorstep, the focus of this month’s show is the importance of voting and having your say as a member of your community. We discussed our main issues, like safety on the streets, knife crime prevention, financial problems and paying for gas and electric bills, the war in Ukraine, supporting children’s and young people’s education after the pandemic, and more. Listen for a wonderful list of tunes to add some rocket fuel to your fire on route to voting!
UF Radio - March 2022: "War. What is it Good For?"

Sadly, this month’s show was an outpouring of the group’s feelings regarding the invasion of Ukraine and its devastating impact on the people of Ukraine. There has been no way to sugar-coat this topic. The members are equally traumatised, as is the most of the world. So, listen for a direct viewpoint from the members of UF Radio. We thought about the tunes that have a meaningful lyric and may bring some hope to our listeners.
UF Radio - February 2022: "We Love Romance"

With this month being the month of love and St. Valentine’s Day, we thought we would explore how the group felt about romance. Is it dead or alive, in their opinion? What does it mean to be ‘romantic’? We asked the group to plan a romantic date for a loved one or someone they’d like to take on a date. Romance was definitely in the air for the UF Radio crew! Listen to find out what people had to say, and hear our smooth, goose-pimple-inducing tunes!