A BRIERLEY Hill fundraising couple have handed over more than £4,000 raised at a football tournament in memory of their son to a charity close to their hearts.

Simon and Lynn Wilkes, of Withymoor, wanted some of the proceeds of the 2022 Olly Wilkes Memorial Football Tournament to go to the Lily Mae Foundation which supports families suffering from the trauma of still birth, neo natal death and miscarriage.

The annual football tournament, held in June, raised a record breaking £13,244 for charity this year – with £4,441.95 earmarked for the Lily Mae Foundation, which helped a family friend.

Simon and Lynn, who have been keeping alive the memory of their late son Olly, aged 22, with the football tournaments and other fundraising events, met the Coventry-based charity’s founders Amy and Ryan Jackson, who started the organisation to help others after their daughter Lily Mae was stillborn in 2010.

They also handed over a cheque for a further £333.33 donated by Stourbridge’s Soffio Lounge at a presentation on October 24.

Simon told the News he and wife Lynn were moved to tears to hear about the charity and how the donations would help.

He said: “We were so humbled to see how the charity supports not only grieving parents of stillbirth, neonatal death, miscarriage, medical termination but supports the siblings and family members also.

“Not only does the charity offer counselling, research into the prevention of baby loss, one to one support, training and support to midwives, they offer amazing memory boxes to bereaved parents, grandparents and siblings.”

He said the money raised would help with all of the charity’s aims and that a number of memory boxes would be given to grieving parents at Birmingham Women’s Hospital in memory of Sebastian Hill – son of Simon’s friend Luke Hill, whose little boy was stillborn in 2019.