Children's Hospice Week is also about raising much-needed funds to ensure families across the country have access to a children's hospice service should they ever need it. Whilst ACH welcomes the unprecedented public funding it helped to secure for England 's children 's hospices in late May by lobbying Prime Minister Tony Blair, ongoing fundraising is critical to the running of the UK's children's hospices.
ACH 's chief executive Barbara Gelb says: "We are delighted that we have secured £9m per year for the next three years from the Government. However, even with this extra money, children's hospices will still rely overwhelmingly on donations from the public. A major national initiative such as Children's Hospice Week is an important time to remind people across the country to continue to support their local children's hospice service."
Somerfield, the high street supermarket that chose ACH as its charity of the year, will be supporting Children's Hospice Week through a variety of in-store butterfly themed events.
"Children's Hospice Week is a great time to celebrate and raise awareness of the fantastic work that children 's hospices do," said Somerfield spokesman Pete Williams. "We aim to really get behind this year's event to make it the best to date. Our staff have already helped raise more than £2.3 million for ACH and Somerfield played an important role in gathering signatures to lobby the Prime Minister as part of The Sun Online 's successful campaign to get more funding for children's hospices," he added.
There are an estimated 20,000 life-limited children in the UK and 4,300 children and families regularly use the UK's 39 children's hospices free of charge every year. Please join children's hospice champions, including Sir Steve Redgrave, Coleen McLoughlin, Nell McAndrew and Sharon and Ozzy Osborne and give your support to help make this the best Children's Hospice Week to date. Visit Childrens Hospices for a list of events and further information. The Butterfly Swimathon can be found at Butterfly Swimathon.
Children's Hospices
Children's hospice services offer a unique, vital and free service to life-limited children and their families. They are more than buildings and they don't care just for children about to die. They provide specialist care and support, whether in the hospice or at home, for children at any stage of their illness, helping with clinical and emotional challenges over many months and years. They also provide daytime activities and access to short breaks. And, when the time comes, they provide end-of-life care, helping children and families approach death with dignity and peace.
Children's hospices also care for families and loved ones - parents facing a future without their child, brothers and sisters who get overlooked, friends and grandparents. They provide a whole safety net of practical assistance and bereavement care and help families avoid the need for psychological or social support later.
Association of Children's Hospices
The Association of Children's Hospices (ACH) is the national voice for children 's hospice services and the children and families they care for. It strives to ensure the estimated 20,000 life-limited children in the UK, and their families, have access to the unique range of services children's hospices provide. Its work includes public and professional awareness raising, fundraising on behalf of all children 's hospices and service development through education, training, research and lobbying. ACH is a registered charity which relies on public support to fund its work. For more information, please visit: Child Hospice
Somerfield
Somerfield 's 52,000 staff chose the Association of Children's Hospices as their charity of the year for 2005/2006 aiming to raise more than £1.5m for children's hospices in the UK. To date, more than £2.3million has been raised.
September 2006 |
