The main beneficiary of the Christian Blandford Fund has been St George's Hospital in Tooting. Christian had his kidney tumour removed there and recovered at their excellent PICU (Pediatric Intensive Care Unit). Since then he has had all his chemotherapy and radiotherapy at The Royal Marsden but has used St George's for emergencies. St George's is where we would drive to in the middle of the night if Christian spiked a temperature while Neutrapenic (no immune system), we usually went to the Pinkney Ward as there were individual rooms, vital for neutrapenic children. The level of comfort was a million miles from that at The Royal Marsden. The rooms had thin curtains so, in the summer, all the children would wake up very early in the morning. The parent slept on an old, uncomfortable sofa bed in the child's room.

We planned the original 10km run to raise £10,000 for new curtains, blackout blinds and sofa beds. As we raised fair more than this they got the blinds, curtains, sofa beds, a new treatment room, high chairs, new medical cots, a new daycare room (before kids were being seen in the playroom!), and the whole place got a much needed lick of paint. Here is the letter from Frances Ward the ward sister. Here is the letter from Peter Nutting the accountant from the charitable foundation.

Since the first run, St George's has a director of fund raising, Sean Bonnington. They are working on a new project to completely renovate all the childrens wards. Here is the latest note from Sean

Christian Blandford Fund

The total amount within the Christian Blandford fund now stands at a very impressive £157,000. This includes the matched giving of £48,000 from the Morgan Stanley International Foundation.

The total expenditure against the fund stands at £47,000 and this figure represents the costs from the new paediatric cancer beds as well as the major gift research and development to support our future fundraising plans at St George’s.

A detailed breakdown of donors to Christian’s fund is available.

Oncology beds

The money donated into Christian’s fund has enabled us to take a substantial step forward in our aim to improve services for children with cancer in South London and South East England.

• Support from the Christian Blandford fund has enabled us to improve and enhance the clinical services we provide for children with cancer at the St George’s site.

• We are currently refurbishing a clinical area on the fifth floor of St George’s with four specialist cancer beds. At current timescales we plan to open this specialist paediatric oncology area in early 2008

• This extra funding has enabled us to work much more closely with the children’s services at the Royal Marsden Hospital (RMH), therefore making it much easier for many patients in the area to receive treatment for cancer

• The improved paediatric cancer services at St George’s will be a strong asset for children and their families using our facilities. Our excellent accessibility to children’s surgery and paediatric intensive care departments will further enhance the quality of care that we are able to deliver to children with cancer

Child Development Centre (CDC)

The Child Development Centre at St George’s Hospital offers a range of services which focus on the assessment and treatment of children with developmental difficulties. In close liaison with parents, carers and other professionals the centre aims to provide a truly holistic service to meet the identified needs of children and their families.

Our new CDC will be somewhere where our young patients feel at ease and are able to interact with our therapists and doctors as naturally as possible, which of course aids both the assessment and therapeutic process. The team in CDC work very closely with the families and our aim is to build on that by developing a centre that provides support for the families, as well as the highest standard of care for the child.

The key changes we expect to make are:

·       Five safe and modern therapy rooms the best possible facilities for our children to receive treatment

·       A brand new gym facility which provides a large spacious area for our children to play and develop

·       A brand new multi-sensory room with specialist equipment to enhance sensory development, hand - eye co-ordination and cause - effect understanding. This room will improve our ability to work with some of our children who require greater stimulation to make a response. This will include different visual and tactile experiences to which these children can respond, in a specially designed environment

·       Outdoor play area with safe access for our children and their families, enabling our centre to offer the rather unusual asset of external play facilities

·       A dedicated ‘quiet room’ for parents to speak confidentially with doctors and therapists. This room will also act as a resource centre, therefore improving our ability to work with other voluntary agencies such as Contact a Family

·       Live video link between therapy rooms to further enhance the quality of our assessment clinics. This will enable us to record a child’s assessment, and playback to other professionals to monitor progress and ensure we recommend the best possible course of therapy

Project detail

A full cost breakdown for the proposed work is available.