Lottery help for hospice service

This week's announcement follows a successful bid from James House Trust and Sussex Downs and Weald Primary Care Trust to the New Opportunities Fund.

Based at Heathfield, James House Trust provides home-based services to children with life-threating and life-limiting illnesses and their families.

Sussex Downs and Weald Primary Care Trust employs the care teams who work from James House.

The lottery funding means James House Trust can now expand and develop services to children and their families in the other East Sussex primary care trusts (Eastbourne Downs, Bexhill and Rother, and Hastings and St Leonards) over the next three years.

These will include additional nursing and respite care together with play, art and music therapy in children's homes.

Fiona Henniker, chief executive of Sussex Downs and Weald Primary Care Trust, said: 'This additional funding for children's palliative care is wonderful news.

'Each year there are an estimated 112 children in East Sussex who need palliative care.

'The expansion of these services will also greatly benefit their families.'

Dr Alasdair Emslie, a James House trustee, said: 'We are delighted to be in a position to expand our services to meet very real needs within our community and we are determined to continue to build on the high reputation of our current nursing staff.'

Family

The James House Hospice is one of a small number of specialist children's charities set up to provide palliative care in the home.

It was formed in 1996 when, following the death of their young son James, Mary and Robin Gooch decided to try to provide families whose children were suffering from terminal or life threatening illnesses, with specialist care in the home.

These services were not available to them during the later stage of James's life.

Originally, the trust aimed to build a bricks and mortar hospice. Yet so urgent was the requirement for care in the community, that as soon as monies were raised they were put to work where they were needed most helping families where children were dying.