The Sick Children’s Trust is the charity that has been providing a welcoming place for families to stay when they have a seriously sick child in hospital for over 40 years and they have helped more than 75,000 families. The charity has just launched its new strategy, setting its direction for the coming five years.
The last few years have seen many challenges for the charity and during the COVID pandemic they could only help a fraction of the families they were able to before. During this time they worked to annual plans to remain agile and flexible, responding to the ever changing external environment, but they have now developed a new five year strategy. While the charity aims to grow and develop, their new five year strategy isn’t a giant leap from what they already do well. In the current climate when fundraising is challenging, it solidifies the way forward for a future where families with a seriously sick child in hospital have somewhere to stay nearby so they can rest, look after themselves and be near their sick child at all times.
The strategy was developed with input from internal and external stakeholders and based on feedback from the families who stay in their ‘Homes from Home’. Last year 99% of families felt staying in the charity’s ‘Homes from Home’ helped them cope, 99% of families felt staying in the ‘Homes from Home’ helped their mental wellbeing and 96% of families who had financial concerns said staying in a ‘Home from Home’ helped to alleviate these.
The charity’s four aims are to:
- Provide clean, comfortable ‘Homes from Home’ and caring staff to support families with a seriously ill child in hospital.
- To work with our existing hospital partners and new hospital partners to support their accommodation needs, ensuring that we are engaging with the hospital senior executive to help understand gaps and potential future needs.
- Deliver cost effective fundraising to cover our running costs and to fund new ‘Homes from Home’
- To be the best employer we can, supporting our staff, Trustees and volunteers to be the best they can possibly be and making The Sick Children’s Trust a place where people want to work.
Without The Sick Children’s Trust families would have to travel long distances, sleep in uncomfortable hospital chairs or pay for expensive hotels just to be by their sick child’s hospital bedside. We know that in the current climate with so many families being so negatively impacted by the cost of living crisis our vital service is more important than ever.
The Sick Children’s Trust CEO, Jane Featherstone said,
“Our new strategy isn’t a departure from what we already do and while we recognise we must change and adapt to external factors, ultimately the charity will continue fulfilling its mission to provide welcoming, comfortable ‘Homes from Home’, to keep families together when they have a sick child in hospital and kind, caring staff to support them. We are committed to ensuring our staff can be their best, that we continue to increase our fundraising to ultimately provide our vital ‘Homes from Home’ when families need us.”
We will monitor our performance and regularly review this against our aims and key performance indicators as well as working towards objectives within our fundraising and communications and marketing strategies to support them.
For more information visit https://www.sickchildrenstrust.org/about-us/five-year-strategy/