Category Archives: Things We’ve Done

Father Christmas visits St George’s

December 22, 2016 by Peter · Leave a comment

 

www.christianblandford.com

 

It has become a tradition that has now been going since 2010. The Bowlers and the Hancox’s, trustees of the Christian Blandford Fund, order and wrap the presents and we visit the hospital to hand them out. This year Santa had his usual elf  Chichi (Christian) and we were also joined by the reindeer Prancer (Jessica) who had a fabulous time ordering Father Christmas around. We also had a full entourage of help including Henry Blandford,  Darren and James Bowler, Neil Berrecloth, the wonderful play specialists, and Trevor Jacobs who offered his photography services at very late notice.

It is always an emotional day. We vividly remember being at the hospital this time of year, hoping that we would be able to get home for as normal a Christmas as we could manage. The hospital wards are, as always, full of love and hope tinged with a fair share of pain and sadness.

We like to think that we managed to raise a few smiles today and hopefully brightened up the day for some children and their families during a difficult time.

The photos are on our Facebook page here and can be downloaded in print quality here.

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Santa and his Elves Visit St George’s

December 21, 2015 by Peter · 1 Comment

We had a wonderful day handing out presents to the Children at St George’s Hospital in Tooting

www.christianblandford.com

 

Thank you very much to the play specialists for all their help. Thank you to the trustee families, Darren and James Bowler , Amy and Anna Hancox and Henry and Christian Blandford for being amazing Santa helpers!

The photos were all taken by the very talented Hugh Miller from Boy meets Girl Photography who gave up his time and skills for nothing but a thank you.

The photos are available for the parents to look at and share on Facebook here or they can be downloaded in print quality from here.

Thank you also to all our wonderful supporters and donators who have raised money and donated money so this can be possible.

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Great News

November 14, 2015 by Peter · Leave a comment

We are thrilled to announce that Waitrose Sevenoaks have chosen The Christian Blandford Fund as one of their three charities for December’s Community Matters!! This is a scheme whereby at the end of your shop you are given a green token to place in a box of the charity you’d most like to support. At the end of the month Waitrose donates £1000 between the 3 charities, with the charity that has the most amount of green tokens getting the majority of the donation.

Please share this with your Sevenoaks friends and make sure the green tokens go in our bin!

Henry and Christian

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And we’re off!!

May 14, 2015 by Claudia · Leave a comment

 

The red rocket is on its way full of goodies for the kids at St George’s Hospital. Details of contents to come…

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Father Christmas at St George’s

December 29, 2014 by Peter · Leave a comment

We had a great day handing out presents at St George’s helped by the wonderful play specialists. The photos are on facebook here and also here where parents can download hi-res versions using the username guest and the password Christmas. Thank you very much for the very talented photographer Hugh Miller who gave up his time and skills in order to help us out.

I received a nice e-mail after one of our Santa visits which i thought it would be good to share, I have changed the names to maintain anonymity.

I just wanted to say “thank-you” on behalf of my son Jack, who received a lovely teddy. It really cheered him up, as did the visit from father xmas and his little helper: his eyes lit up when he saw them (I think he was thinking “oh no, the door’s opening, someone in a uniform is coming to do something nasty to me”) and was lovely for his dad and mum to see. As you can appreciate, being in an isolation room at xmas is pretty grim for a kid. Jack has been poorly all his life and is a “regular” at St George’s, despite living 60 miles away in West Sussex. The distance makes it particularly difficult as his brother, Henry, who he is very close to, has to stay at his Grandma’s during his many stays at St George’s, so we are all split up as a family. Luckily, we were put on “home leave” for xmas but must return next Friday.

I think your charity is brilliant. As soon as I read the poster in the posh new parents room I could tell that the person who wrote it had a real insight into life for kids and their families in this situation that only personal experience (unfortunately) can bring.

Merry xmas to you all and keep up the good work!

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New delivery to St Georges

December 19, 2014 by Claudia · Leave a comment

A couple of weeks ago I did a quick delivery to St George’s Hospital! The Red Rocket was packed full of goodies and ready to go, I delivered…

2 kids electric ride on cars – Going to operations in a little electric car is far more fun and maybe less scary than on a wheelchair.

16 Night lights – little things are sometimes important

3 plug in electric portable heaters – bizarre but well needed

3 mini iPads – for the play specialist to carry around as a tool to help distract children when needed.

11 Whiteboards – for the kids’ rooms

The Rocket – full of goodies

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Food Glorious Food

October 21, 2014 by Peter · Leave a comment

We strongly feel that our goal is to improve the life of children staying in hospitals. Sometimes that means spending money on buying things that make life better, but sometimes it involves putting pressure (gentle or otherwise) on authorities to make changes that we feel are important. All of the trustees in The Christian Blandford Fund, Peter, Claudia, Amy and Darren, have had children who have spent considerable time in NHS hospitals and have strong views of how to help others in that situation. One of our big concerns was the quality of the food in the wards at St George’s. At the Royal Marsden there was a wonderful chef and an assistant who took individual orders from each of the kids and made it freshly for them. At St George’s there was a trolley with pre cooked and reheated food similar to what you would get in an airplane, unsurprisingly much of the food was left untouched by the kids.

For some reason this has been a battle that has taken a long time to win, but we are delighted to have finally made some progress. Together with Samuel’s Charity we were ready to pay for the cost of having a couple of hostesses to take the children’s orders, so the food could be prepared in the kitchens. The hospital, fortunately, managed to find the funds from elsewhere and the quality of the food is now considerably improved. We are delighted, well done to Martin, Samuel’s dad, who did so much to push this forward.

There are big plans afoot to make improvements at St George’s and we hope that our voice continues to be heard so the things that we feel need to be improved upon are prioritised.

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PS Vitas for the wards

October 17, 2014 by Peter · Leave a comment

We have just bought some of these great PS Vitas with some cool games for the children on the wards at St George’s. Time moves slowly when you’re in bed all day in hospital, hopefully these will add a bit of fun!

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Momentum Meeting

October 15, 2014 by Peter · Leave a comment

Claudia, Darren and Amy are meeting with the lovely people at Momentum today. They have done some great work at Kingston Hospital and we are hoping to work with them on improvements to St George’s.

I have been playing some more with the website. I have now gone right through the Christian’s Story Page and made every day an individual entry on the blog, rather than a long page.

This means that I can now filter out all the fund raising posts, which I have linked to in the menu or all the posts about Christian, which is what the new Christian’s Story menu link now points to.

It  now makes it possible to link to any individual story or fund raising event and share it on Facebook or Twitter.

I think it’s time I stopped fiddling now.

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A great donation for a fabulous cause

September 23, 2014 by Peter · Leave a comment

Thank you to the fantastic Lancashire foundation who donated £3,400 to pay for an amazing piece of kit (http://www.accuvein.com/) that makes inserting cannulas (needles for blood) much less painful for children. We have bought four of these wonderful machines together with Samuel’s Charity.

Thank you to Adam King for putting The Christian Blandford Fund forward for this.

Martin, from Samuel’s charity, explained the need for these very well…

We are looking to buy two more infrared scanners that shows where veins are so injections are made first time, every time.This is huge. No one likes injections but it can take 2,3,4 or sometimes more attempts to find a vein, especially after weeks or months of treatment. This is not only painful but very distressing for many kids (and adults!). Some medicines make you more sensitive so an injection feels more like being stabbed than a ‘sharp scratch’. Very often prolonged medicine treatment like Chemotherapy does this. Not to mention the psychological impact of worrying about frequent and painful injections.Now, because of support and donations, we bought one of these amazing pieces of equipment, an Accuview. Being able to get the vein first time cuts down the amount of pain and upset hugely. But that’s not all. Small kids have small veins and often you have to ‘root around’ (a medical term, apparently!) to find the right position. The Accuview solves this – they can get in the vein first time and no rooting around, seriously reducing the pain down.I spoke to the nurses yesterday and they all loved the Accuview, even the most senior nurses were raving about it!

This one piece of equipment has already made many kids on the ward much happier, and their days will not be as overshadowed with the worry of painful, repeated attempts for injections.

This doesn’t just help the children, though. As a parent I hate to see my kids go through pain. It was one of the hardest things I have ever done asking Samuel to have repeated and painful procedures, knowing it would hurt, and not being able to take the pain away or protect him. With Accuview we can go some way to doing this and that means so much to me.

Each one costs a few thousand pounds so we still need help as we need two more of these amazing machines for the other childrens wards at St Georges Hospital.

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