DERIAN House Children’s Hospice has been awarded £50,000 from the Cumbria Community Foundation and Pappagallino Flow Through Fund.
The funding has supported the hospice to maintain its essential work in the community throughout the COVID-19 crisis.
The Chorley-based children’s hospice provides respite and end-of-life care to more than 400 children and young people from across the North West and South Cumbria. During the COVID-19 pandemic, many children were forced to shield at home and services at the hospice were reduced, resulting in an increase in demand for the Derian at Home service.
The Derian at Home team takes Derian’s expert knowledge, skills and support into the community, enabling a child to receive ongoing care or end-of-life care in their own home.
Lyndsay Stubley’s 2-and-a-half-year-old daughter Harmony-Jayne receives regular visits from the Derian at Home team, prior to lockdown she also visited the hospice for respite.
Lyndsay said: “As a family with a disabled child, we have been shielding and providing 24-hour care for Harmony-Jayne. The visits from the Derian at Home team have brought light into our home during these dark times.
“The team is amazing, they are always full of smiles and laughs and Harmony-Jayne has loads of fun singing and dancing with them. We have a wall in our house that we call the Derian Wall and it is filling up with photos and paintings that she has made. The visits make Harmony-Jayne so happy, as well as the rest of our family too.
“We can’t wait for things to get back to normal and to be able to use other services at the hospice. The hydrotherapy pool is first on our list as Harmony-Jayne loves the water!”
In addition to home visits, the hospice also offered other services remotely such as bereavement counselling and playtime sessions via Zoom.
The care offered by Derian House Children’s Hospice is free to the families, but services costs £4.8 million to run every year. With just a fraction of this coming from government funding, the charity relies heavily on the generosity of its supporters.
John Pye, Trusts and Statutory Funding Manager at Derian House, said: “The Derian at Home service has been a lifeline for our families when they needed us most. Thanks to the grant from the Cumbria Community Foundation, our incredible Derian at Home team have been able to support our children and young people in their own homes throughout the lockdown periods.”
The generous grant sees the Cumbria Community Foundation take the top spot as the biggest charitable trust supporter to the children’s hospice.
Annalee Holliday, Grants & Donor Services and Communications Officer for the Foundation, said: “We have seen many groups struggling to keep going after having to overcome so many challenges. They are seeing huge spikes in demand at the same time as losing vital revenue and eating into their reserves.
“They have had to adapt their services while being unable to hold fundraising events or provide the services that bring in income. The Pappagallino Fund is helping to plug the gaps in finances as well as pay towards some of the investment they have had to make in adapting their services.”
