Grant delight for Grace's Place

This Children in Need grant will enable the hospice to provide care and support for babies with life-shortening conditions

Forget Me Not Children’s Hospice has announced that BBC Children in Need has awarded the charity a grant of £132,146 over three years.

This grant will enable the hospice to provide care and support for babies with life-shortening conditions and their brothers and sisters at their second hospice, Grace’s Place, in Bury.

The grant will fund a perinatal nurse to provide care and support for babies and children across Bury, Oldham and Rochdale.

This essential service will improve the quality of life for newborn babies, as well as the emotional wellbeing of their siblings and families.

The service will be provided at Grace’s Place, as well as in family homes and within neonatal and paediatric intensive care units in north Manchester and Lancashire.

Sharon Burton, Director of Care at Forget Me Not, said: “BBC Children in Need grants have enabled us to run the perinatal nursing service at our West Yorkshire hospice for many years, so we’re delighted that they’ve awarded us with this new funding.

"The service we provide is vital for many babies, and their families, and we’re so pleased that we can now offer this at Grace’s Place.”

Forget Me Not’s perinatal service gives families the choice of where their baby receives care, meaning that babies who would otherwise live their whole life on a hospital ward surrounded by machines and strangers will instead be able to experience those things all babies should experience: time in their own loving homes, being cuddled by mums and dads, brothers and sisters.

The perinatal nurse will also help those siblings cope with what’s happening, spend time with their new brother or sister, as well as their parents, grandparents and wider family to aid their understanding and create precious memories.

Recruitment of this nurse is well underway as part of a wider staffing drive at Grace’s Place as the hospice moves ever closer to fully opening its doors.

Forget Me Not already provides care and support to local families in the comfort of their own homes.

More than 650 children in the Bury, Oldham and Rochdale area are living with life-shortening conditions – but, until now, the vast majority didn’t get any support from a children’s hospice.

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