You can change someone’s life

AS 2002 dawns, there is no change in sight for the unequal treatment handed out to hospices caring for children.

While adult hospices receive around a third of their running costs from the NHS, most children's hospitals have to make do with less than four per cent.

Some, like the Demelza House hospice in Kent which cares for children from all over the News Shopper area get nothing at all.

Demelza, in Sittingbourne, costs £1.6m a year to run. Early last year it was in such dire financial straits it had to make staff redundant and close four of its eight beds.

Thankfully, publicity about its struggle brought an "enormous response" and the increased level of fundraising, meant the hospice was able to reopen some of the closed beds and is now re-recruiting staff.

Demelza works with its child patients often from the day they are diagnosed until they die.

It provides short-term respite care, holiday respite care for the child or the whole family and emergency respite care when a family crisis means it cannot meet their sick child's needs.

It also gives terminal care, helps with funeral arrangements and provides bereavement support and counselling for the whole family.

Demelza has been open for three years and the whole children's hospice movement is only 10 years old.

Head of fundraising Alexa Kersting-Jones believes this may be one reason why funding for children's hospices has yet to reach an equal financial footing with that of adults. An added complication in Demelza's case is that, while most hospices have to deal with only one health authority to arrange funding, Demelza has a number because of its catchment area.

"We don't want to be over-dependent on once source of income," said Alexa. "We want to be able to respond to each family's individual needs."

But some NHS cash would certainly make finding £1.6m a year easier.

A foundation set up by News Shopper owners, Gannett, has just given the hospice £5,000 and Demelza stands to get at least another £186,000 from readers of a national newspaper which made the hospice one of its Christmas charities.

It also encourages companies to offer sponsorship and people to covenant a regular amount to the charity.

But News Shopper readers can also help the hospice. Apart from donating cash, you can join the paper's campaign and write to your MP asking him or her to raise the issue of NHS funding for children's hospices, with the Health Secretary Alan Milburn.

Making Lauren's lot a little easier

FOUR-year-old Lauren Hancock has a rare metabolic illness which is both life-threatening and life-shortening. She may never live to become an adult.

She was referred to Demelza House a year ago by Guy's Hospital, where she was undergoing treatment and has stayed there several times for respite care, to give mum Debbie, 36, a break.

"Life would be a lot more difficult without Demelza," Debbie told the News Shopper. "Lauren loves it when she stays there.

"It is so friendly. She does different things and meets other children.

"She has me for 24 hours every day, so it is a break for her as well as for me.

"She is so well looked after.

"I never used to leave Lauren, but on the last two times she has stayed on her own overnight."

Debbie described how upset she was when the hospice was forced to close beds because of lack of cash. "It is such a wonderful place and so many families benefit from it."

She does as much as she can to help, buying its own lottery tickets and Christmas cards and attending its fundraising events.

"Everyone needs a break sometimes. I will always be a mum first, but I need some time out to be myself, otherwise life gets so monotonous.

"Demelza lets me do that. It is wonderful."