Brighton charity hosts dedicated funding for special care baby unit
Rockinghorse Children’s Charity has announced that a website has gone live, providing information for parents and carers about a special care baby unit.
The Brighton charity is also hosting a dedicated fund for the Trevor Mann Baby Unit, which is based at the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Kemp Town.
The website trevormannbabyunit.co.uk has been built by Sussex marketing company Sans Frontiere where the baby of project manager Kate Wright was treated.
She said: “My own baby was treated at the Trevor Mann Baby Unit and received fantastic life-saving care.
“I was thrilled to work on the creation of this website which aims to provide reassurance to parents about the expertise of the TMBU teams and give a glimpse of what to expect.
“I hope that sections such as ‘How will I feel?’ will provide emotional support to families during their worrying experience.”
Rockinghorse said that the website would be “an invaluable resource, providing information to parents and relatives of sick and premature babies, both existing and expecting”.
It includes links to the Rockinghorse Children’s Charity Trevor Mann Baby Unit fund http://www.justgiving.com/TMBU-RockinghorseFund.
The unit was founded by Trevor Mann, a children’s doctor, whose skills saved the lives of many babies in Brighton.
He recognised the need for specialist paediatric care and started an appeal initially to raise funds for research into children’s diseases.
He founded the special care baby unit at the Royal Sussex in 1970.
Dr Mann also founded the Rockinghorse Children’s Charity in 1967, with the initial aim of providing incubators for neonatal patients outside London.
Rockinghorse, the official fundraising arm of the Royal Alexandra Children’s Hospital, is a key supporter of the Trevor Mann Baby Unit.
It raises money for life-saving and cutting-edge medical equipment while ensuring that children are treated in an environment better suited to their needs.
Ryan Watkins, consultant neonatologist at the Trevor Mann Baby Unit, said: “We are thrilled to launch the new Trevor Mann Baby Unit website on behalf of both the Trevor Mann Baby Unit in Brighton and the Special Care Baby Unit at the Princess Royal Hospital in Haywards Heath.
“It will help us provide better information about what we do and how we do it to parents and families who need or have needed our service – and to the wider public too.”
Dr Watkins added: “It also coincides with the launch of the new TMBU fund, hosted by Rockinghorse Children’s Charity, dedicated only to the work of TMBU.
“Every pound raised for this fund will go towards making the care we provide and the experience of families as good as we can make it.”
Rockinghorse chief executive Ryan Heal said: “This is such a wonderful website for the Trevor Mann Baby Unit, enabling them to provide their own online resource to spread the word about their life-saving work.”
