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Association of Children's Hospices
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ROTARY LAUNCHES PARTNERSHIP WITH ASSOCIATION OF CHILDREN'S HOSPICES
Rotary International in Great Britain and Ireland announced today that it will be working in partnership with the Association of Children's Hospices (ACH) to offer Rotary support to the children's hospice movement throughout these islands. The Association will benefit from Rotarians providing hands on help to all 43 of their member children's hospices organisations as well as fund raising initiatives throughout the next year. The partnership was launched by Fiona Phillips of GMTV at Richard House Children's Hospice in London.
Fiona Phillips said 'Children's hospices provide such important and unique services for children with life limiting and life threatening conditions, and their families. I have seen the work at close hand here at Richard House and I have been very impressed by the obvious dedication and commitment of all the staff. I am very pleased to support the launch of this exciting partnership between Rotary and the chidren's hospice movement. I extend an enormous thanks to Rotary, on behalf of all the children and their families who will ultimately benefit from their hard work.'
There are some 20,000 children across the UK with conditions that mean they will not live to reach adulthood. Some children die when very young; others deteriorate slowly over many years. Families caring for life-limited children - often 24 hours a day over many years - can feel extremely isolated and under enormous emotional, physical and financial strain: relationships can suffer; careers may have to be abandoned; well brothers and sisters feel left out; and normal family activities become impossible.
Children's Hospices welcome whole families for respite care, giving them a break together or time to themselves in a comfortable home-like atmosphere. They provide expert palliative and emergency care; practical advice and information ; and also terminal care and support into bereavement for as long as it is needed.
There are currently 25 fully operational children's hospices in the United Kingdom, 5 organisations offering a Hospice at Home service, 1 children's hospice Day Care service and another 13 projects with plans at various stages to establish a children's hospice service. ACH works on behalf of all of these organisations.Brian Stoyel, President of Rotary in Great Britain and Ireland said 'Children's Hospices help improve the quality of life for families with life-limited children. Over the coming year we hope to raise two things. First of all, we aim to raise people's awareness of the needs of life-limited children and their families, and secondly , we hope to raise much needed funds to continue and expand the wonderful children's hospice services which so many parents depend on. I am delighted to have the support of Rotary clubs throughout the country to support this very important partnership with ACH.'
Barbara Gelb, Chief Executive of ACH said' We are delighted that Rotary has chosen ACH to be its charity of the year. Their support in towns across Great Britain and Ireland will be invaluable in helping us meet the ever increasing demands on our children's hospices. There are no children's hospices in the NHS; all are in the voluntary sector and are independent registered charities. The care that we provide is free to the families that need it, despite the fact that they cost up to £5 million to set up and approximately £1.5 million a year to run. Children's hospices receive, on average, just over 5% statutory funding, some receive none at all, which means they have to be almost entirely self-supporting.'
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