Centre 70 Opfa (One Parent Family Association)

A Memory of Tulse Hill.

As I have a terminal illness my children had asked me to write some short stories of my life.
Some of the most enjoyable and memorable ones were when living in Tulse Hill.
I looked on the internet for Centre 70 Tulse Hill and found it albeit in a different place.
Around 1970 I set up the Centre 70 One Parent Family Association with the Rev Ralph Blow - the Methodist Minister of the Methodist Church. The centre was based in the Methodist Church in Christchurch Road.
We offered advice on all sorts of welfare and family issues and in fact many years later when teaching at an Adult Community College a support worker after assisting me for some weeks asked if my name had been Sonya Nally.
I replied that it was my maiden name and how did she know. In the 1970's she had been working in the housing department at Lambeth Council and apparently all the staff there dreaded a phone call from me. (Usually to complain about the housing conditions of one of our members and an insistence that something be done about rehousing).
I asked her what gave me away and she replied it was my voice, for weeks she knew she had heard it before but it was some 25 years previously so it took her some time to remember.
I became the welfare office for OPFA and organised fund raising, workshops, holiday clubs, outings etc.
The Reverend Blow often said he thought there were more Christians outside his Church than in as he often asked for help from OPFA members when he couldn't get enough help from Church members for his fund raisers or activities.
Hard work but good days.

Sonya Barnes

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