Support Dogs is our charity partner for Steel City Beer & Cider Festival
CAMRA Sheffield & District is delighted to announce Support Dogs as its charity partner for our 50th Steel City Beer & Cider Festival, being held at the atmospheric Kelham Island Museum from 21-24 October.
It’s a huge honour to have this pioneering and life-saving national charity, which is homegrown having been founded in Sheffield 34 years ago, as our beneficiary.
Support Dogs (charity number 1088281) is dedicated to providing life-changing health and social care for children and adults living with challenging medical conditions.
With a new national headquarters on Herries Road South, Hillsborough, it provides, trains and supports specialist assistance dogs to achieve this.
It offers three training programmes – autism assistance, disability assistance and epilepsy seizure alert – to help people live safer, more independent lives.
Disability assistance dogs are trained for people with physical disabilities. Here, the client’s own pet dog is trained to perform tasks both in and out of the home, which are specifically tailored to their individual needs, including dressing and undressing, opening doors and loading and unloading the washing machine.
Autism assistance dogs are trained to provide safety and to facilitate a more independent and socially inclusive life for both the autistic child and their family.
These wonderdogs can reduce stress for family members, provide safety and positive changes in behaviour, comfort when the child is upset and also help to reduce behavioural outbursts.
Epilepsy seizure alert dogs are trained to provide a 100% reliable warning up to one hour in advance of an oncoming seizure.
They give time for their owner to find a place of safety and privacy as they have their seizure. Support Dogs is the only organisation in the UK to provide and train seizure alert dogs.
Around 1,000 people with epilepsy die each year and research suggests that most of these deaths are sudden and unexpected.
The warning provided by a seizure alert dog means that a client can remove themselves from any danger and have a seizure in safety and privacy, giving them control over their seizure and allowing a much more independent life.
It can take over two years to train a support dog and each dog costs the charity around £29,000 to train and at least a further £3,000 a year to support throughout their eight-year working lives.
Yet the charity receives no government funding and relies solely on donations.
It’s not just Labradors who are trained – the charity has managed to turn breeds including sausage dogs, King Charles Spaniels and miniature Labradoodles into life-changing assistance dogs.
As well as its workforce of just over 40 staff members, Support Dogs relies heavily on its loyal army of 200 volunteers, which are deployed in roles varying from puppy socialisers, doggy foster carers and holiday cover carers to volunteer drivers and volunteer office admin.
Its amazing volunteers donate over 100,000 hours each year to help change lives across these roles.
CAMRA Sheffield & District has a toy support dog mascot whose name is Beer 26 who will be located in the Staff Office and on tour during the festival.
Collection buckets will be located around the festival if you’d like to chuck some cash in, alternatively you may wish to donate your refund on unspent beer tokens or returned souvenir glass.
Find out more about Support Dogs at www.supportdogs.org.uk and visit https://sheffield.camra.org.uk/2026/04/steel-city-beer-cider-festival-5 for more details on the beer festival.