Opinion: Mike Holland

The Chestnut Tree House Children’s Hospice patron on ‘Find A Friend’

It’s a tough topic to think about but one that society needs to get to grips with. It is a fact, I am afraid, that the majority of us do not pass away peacefully in our sleep. The reality is that many of us will need end of life care for which during lifetime we make very little provision. Even politicians are reluctant to talk about it and certainly very few are actively championing proper funding of this essential service. Worse still, the budget for government hospice support has even been cut whilst the overseas aid budget has been ring fenced.

I find it astonishing that hospice care is not 100 per cent funded by the NHS. However, even if we are totally blasé about what happens to us adults the mind boggles when we realise that even hospice care for our children with life limiting illnesses have had their budget reduced to circa eight per cent of their total spend. I cannot imagine any responsible adult would wish a child or their grieving family to suffer more than they absolutely have to. Yet here we see successive governments simply skirting around the issue as though it does not exist.

Let me assure you, and speaking as a parent who has lost a child, there is nothing more important than specialist hospice child care when you have a child with a life limiting illness. We should all be lobbying our MPs to wake up and realise we cannot continue to ignore this issue. However, until we do find a political party who has the common sense to deal with hospice funding as a priority it seems that yet again it is the hard pressed British public who are attempting to fill the void left by politicians.

“Even hospice care for our children have had their budget reduced to circa eight per cent”

Chestnut Tree House Children’s Hospice – the organisation I am honoured to represent as a patron, is fighting back. We have a large number of fantastic supporters but still for every child we can help a shortage of funding means there is another child and their family that we cannot help. We are the only children’s hospice in the whole of Sussex and East Hampshire. We are currently assisting 280 families through the most traumatic times imaginable. It costs circa £3million a year to run the service and we could do with twice that to provide the service we feel the area needs.

We recently won two National awards for our ‘Pay For A Day’ appeal which continues to successfully allow companies and individuals to sponsor a day or multiple days of their choice. Sponsors can name the day they wish to support. At £6,850 to keep the hospice open for the day you would be amazed how good it makes you feel to know that your company or you as an individual have kept this vital service open for a day.

Aware that we need to continually reinvent ourselves we have recently added a new concept. We felt that if we could double our support base we would in effect double our income if each supporter found just one other supporter to join our ranks. We have called this appeal ‘Find A Friend’. Put simply ,all we ask our supporters to do is to find one person who will support Chestnut Tree House as they do. As an example my ‘Find A Friend’ is holding various events throughout the year on our behalf. However not being the sort of chap to let the grass grow under his feet, he has, in turn introduced two people and it is easy to see how an idea like this can mushroom. I am hopeful that if we can continue to increase our support base then one day at least our children’s hospice will be reaching all the families who need our help.
If you feel you can help in any way please contact our fundraising team at www.chestnut-tree-house.org.uk or call 01903 871820. We will be extremely grateful!