Everyone will remember the two local fundraising campaigns over the last couple of years in order to send two local children, first Toby and secondly Abigail, over to visit a very special surgeon, Dr Park at the St Louis Children’s Hospital in America in order to undergo a life-changing operation to enable each of them to walk independently.
Toby and Abigail have both made tremendous progress to date following their operations, but also there has been an amazing development locally with the first ever UK SDR surgery (Dr Park version) having been performed just up the road in Frenchay. The surgeon at Frenchay trained under Dr Park, who is renowned as the best in the world at this and has a 100% sucess rate and has performed over 2000 of these operations.
This development at Frenchay has brought forward the BBC’s follow up on Abigail’s progress following her operation in December. The programme will be shown as an Inside Out West Special at 7.30 on BBC1 on 20th June . Abigail is currently 5 months into a 12-month rehabilitation, so her progress is still on-going and she continues to improve.
The first programme on Abigail aired last November and is available to view here if you missed it. Photo shows Abigail with ‘the amazing’ Dr Park.
The young people at Bradley Stoke Community School raised an amazing £867.64 today for the Footsteps4Abigail campaign to help send 9 year old Abigail to the USA for an operation to help her walk.
Some students fully entered into the fun of the day and came to school in their slippers and with ‘feet’ face-painted on their cheeks! A group of Year 8 students went even further, making a special effort to do an extra collection for Abigail asking teachers and friends to dig a little deeper and donate what they could spare. In just a few hours they had collected an additional £60!! Well done girls! 
Fundraising at Currys Megastore Cribbs Causeway for Footsteps4Abigail. Photo shows Abigail and the team getting ready to fundraise the weekend away. A fantastic £1,923 was raised over the 2 days thanks to the support of friends and Currys staff.
Laura Woodward is mum to two boys Jake (6) and Theo (4) who attend Holy Trinity Primary School, where Toby Cox is about to move up into Year 1 from Reception. Laura has taken the huge step of entering the Bristol Half Marathon this September, running to raise funds for 8 year old Abigail Newton Smith who, like Toby, has Spastic Diplegia Cerebral Palsy. Also like Toby, Abigail is trying to raise the £36,000 necessary to undergo an operation in St Louis, America which will give her the chance to walk unaided.
Laura says: “People who know me well, will know that running a half marathon will not come easy, I have been training hard but still have much to do…, I hope that you will all support me, or should I say support Abigail…I am running on behalf of a special eight year old girl Abigail, to raise money for an operation which will change her life forever. For further details and to sponsor me, please visit 