A CAFE is organising a special brunch on Sunday to raise funds for a charity launched in memory of York schoolboy Oscar Hughes.

Julia Holding, of The Pig and Pastry in Bishopthorpe Road, says staff and friends have agreed to work for free, and many suppliers are donating goods for the day.

“We are aiming to raise a couple of thousand pounds for OSCAR’s (Ongoing Support, Care And Research) Paediatric Brain Tumour Charity,” she said.

The cafe, which is normally shut on a Sunday, will be open from 9 am until 2pm, serving breakfast items including bacon and egg, bacon butties, sausage butties, waffles, scrambled eggs and Eggs Benedict, along with tea and coffee.

The event comes as the charity has already passed the £135,000 mark in its effort to fund research into brain tumours in children. Marie and Ian Hughes, of Dunnington, set up the charity with the aim of helping other children who are suffering from a tumour like the one which killed their son Oscar last year.

Oscar originally fell ill in February 2013 but responded well to treatment until he suffered a sudden relapse early in 2014.

A fundraising campaign was launched last April to pay for him to take part in promising research and clinical trials abroad. It raised tens of thousands of pounds in a matter of days, with support from Manchester United, which Oscar supported, but then the relapse proved too aggressive to treat and he died in May, aged nine.

As well as seeking a cure, the Hughes are also hoping to help scientists find less devastating forms of treatment than the ones given to Oscar, and intend to work closely with other charities and co-fund projects with The Brain Tumour charity.

Marie said fundraising had continued over the winter and Spring months, with about 50 people taking part in the Yorkshire Major Series, a series of 5K and 10K obstacle races held at Bramham Park near Wetherby last month.

She said people who had heard about the appeal, with no connection to the family, had also been doing their own independent fundraising events to support the charity.