Children’s heart services – campaign update

After four months of intense activity, the public consultation into the recommendations of the Safe & Sustainable Review closed at the end of June.

The support that our campaign has received has been overwhelming. Huge thanks go to the dedicated staff at The Brompton Fountain for spearheading the campaign (particularly Trudy Nickels), and to everyone who has signed the petition, completed the consultation response form, gone along to the consultation events, marched, demonstrated, contacted their local papers…the list goes on. It’s been wonderful to hear your stories, and to see your dedication to our unit. Thank you.

But although the consultation’s over, the fight goes on. Last week, the Royal Brompton & Harefield NHS Foundation Trust’s application for a judicial review was granted – you can read the full story on the Trust’s website here, and the background to our legal challenge here. And in the meantime, the Joint Commission of Primary Care Trusts has agreed to put together an expert panel to consider the knock-on effects of removing children’s heart surgery from our hospital – although they have yet to meet. More information will be available on the Trust website and our charity website in due course.

You can also see this fantastic video that our staff have put together to highlight our campaign – see it, comment on it, and share it in your social media updates.

What to get the man who has everything?

19th June is Father’s Day. Don’t let the day pass without letting your Dad know how much he means to you. But what to get for the man that has everything? Another pair of socks? Yet another tie? How about some of these great ideas from Give as you Live™? And remember, if you download the Give as you Live™ shopping App first, these stores will donate back to us a percentage of your bill – for free. It costs you nothing and will help us out a lot.

• Cufflinks are the new tie and www.TMLewin.co.uk have some stylish pairs on offer
• How about a Rapala Husky Jerk? According to www.fishtec.co.uk it’s “an all time classic fishing lure”
• Or personalise your Dad his very own “World’s Best Dad” mug from www.very.co.uk
• If none of those sound like your Dad, we can pretty much promise you’ll find something on www.firebox.co.uk that will make him laugh.

Make sure to visit www.giveasyoulive.com/rbhcharity first to download the App, so you can turn every cufflink, lure or spy pen into a fantastic chance to raise money for us, at no cost to you.

Put your mobile to good use

By now, we’re not as afraid of mobiles as we used to be. Whether you’ve got an iPhone, android smartphone, or even just a “normal” phone, they’ve become such an integral part of our daily lives that we’d be lost without them.

For a while now, you’ll have seen charities giving you the chance to make a donation simply by sending a text message. We’ve never really done this because of the costs involved – a few years ago, if you’d donated £10 a whole range of charges would have been deducted, leaving us with about 70-80% of the donation rather than the full amount.

That’s now changed – JustGiving have gone into partnership with Vodafone to offer a text donation service that means if you donate £10, that’s exactly what we’ll get. The full £10. No charges are taken off, and you can even make the donation with gift aid as well.

So if you want to put your mobile to good use today, it’s simple. Just text RBHC11 £5 or RBHC11 £10 to 70070, and make a difference to our patients.

Thank you.

UPDATE: 22/06/11

If you’ve got a fundraising page on JustGiving, you can now get your very own text giving code. It’s easy: login to your JustGiving account, create your shortcode and start promoting it! Think creatively about where you can advertise the code – you could print it onto your t-shirt or running vest, add it to leaflets, posters and raffle tickets; and of course, remember to include it in your email signatures, Facebook status updates, and tweets!

JustGiving making it easier to give…

With the launch of a fantastic new app, JustGiving have made it even easier for people to donate to your JG fundraising page – without leaving Facebook.

We all put our fundraising page links in our FB status updates – but until now we’ve had to rely on our friends actually following the link. As with anything that asks you to move onto a different website, the tendency to say “oh, I’ll come back to that” is really strong. So the potential drop out rate is high, leaving you to chase around after your friends and remind them about your page.

But JG have now developed an app that takes that away – by installing it on your FB page in some very simple steps, your fundraising page will appear in your news feed. And then when your friend clicks on the “Donate” button, they can make a secure donation straight away – so no following a link outside of FB, no reminders, and hopefully no drop outs.

The app is still in the beta testing phase, but we’ve been really impressed so far. Have a go yourself, and let us know what you think – we’ll pass comments on to JG.

It’s simple:

• Go to http://apps.facebook.com/jgdonation
• Add the last part of your JustGiving page link (the part after www.justgiving.com)
• Click on Share
• You can add a personal message and the link will appear on your personal news feed

We’ve also got a version of the app running on our Facebook fan page, which we’re using to highlight “Fundraisers of the Week”. If you’d like to be included, please email fundraising@rbht.nhs.uk

Children’s Cardiac Surgery Review

Yesterday saw the publication of the Safe & Sustainable Review into the provision of children’s cardiac surgery in the UK. The review’s recommendations included discontinuing children’s heart surgery at Royal Brompton.

Clinical teams from Royal Brompton are recognised internationally for the quality of their specialist paediatric care, the Trust’s congenital heart service has an excellent safety record and mortality rates are less than half the national average (0.9% versus 2%). Over 9,000 procedures for children were carried out by our experts in 2010, with 453 cardiac operations undertaken – many of them complex procedures on newborn babies

Royal Brompton & Harefield NHS Foundation Trust chief executive, Bob Bell, commented: “Although we have been aware of rumours for some time, we believed that closing down such a high-performing children’s service would not be seen as a viable option. Our weighted score of joint fourth out of ten, with Great Ormond Street, in Sir Ian Kennedy’s assessment report of all centres in England, suggests to us that our service is robust and fit for purpose.”

If this recommendation was to be accepted, the effect on our hospital would be devastating. The paediatric intensive care unit (PICU) would have to close, and this in turn would adversely affect our specialist respiratory services, many of which can’t be delivered without the back-up of a specialist intensive care service. You can read more about our initial response to the review here.

The review’s recommendations are open to public consultation from 28th February. We’ve got four months to put forward our case that this move would be the wrong decision; and we’ll be working closely with the Trust and other partners including the Brompton Fountain to involve supporters, patients and relatives.

To keep up to date with the latest developments, visit the Trust website. You can also join the Facebook group to show your support. A public event will be held at the Emirates Stadium, London on 7th May, and you can register here.

Runners wanted…

Every time the new year rolls around, we all make a number of resolutions – whether they be to get fit and actually use our gym membership, give up smoking and/or drinking, or simply get outdoors more. Sticking to a resolution is always much harder than making them in the first place.

But if you want your resolution to get fit to mean something this year, why not sign up to run for our team in this year’s BUPA London 10,000 on 30th May? All we ask is that you raise at least £300 for our charity – and every penny will go to supporting the treatment and care of patients at our hospitals.

The charity’s fundraising team has signed up for the challenge – you can follow our progress on our website, and also on our JustGiving page at www.justgiving.com/rbh-bupa10k/.

If you’d like to be part of our team, please email e.cassley@rbht.nhs.uk. If you’ve secured your place, you can set up a JustGiving fundraising page at www.justgiving.com/rbhhospital/raisemoney  

World COPD Day

Today marks World COPD Day, where hospitals, patients and others across the globe raise awareness of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease.

COPD covers a range of conditions such as asthma, bronchitis and emphysema, which affect over 900,000 people in the UK. Our experts are not only treating patients – with facilities such as a rapid access clinic and pulmonary rehabilitation – but also researching the causes and potential cures for these conditions.

But it doesn’t stop there. Our innovative Singing for Breathing programme has been teaching singing techniques to patients for nearly two years, giving them an enjoyable and informal form of exercise to complement their traditional physiotherapy and rehabilitation techniques.

The response we’ve had has been overwhelming. The majority of patients have not only enjoyed our workshops and want to continue, but 82% said they felt better after taking part.

The workshops have been funded entirely by the charity, and your support is vital to help them continue. To find out more, please go to our website: http://bit.ly/9lmO18 or email at fundraising@rbht.nhs.uk.

Christmas Appeal 2010

Tired of sending Christmas cards to people you don’t contact the rest of the year? Why not use the money you’d spend on cards to support a worthwhile cause – our very first Christmas appeal.

We’re trying to raise £4,000 to buy some special mobile sensory equipment for our children’s unit. Being in hospital with a serious illness is an upsetting and difficult time for any child. That’s why our dedicated play service team do their best to make the hospital experience as positive as possible, by providing the children with a range of activities and equipment.

The mobile sensory equipment is really important, as we can bring play to children who are too poorly to leave their beds. It can change the whole atmosphere and environment for the child, giving a calming experience for children, siblings and their parents.

To find out more and support the appeal, please visit http://www.rbht.nhs.uk/about/fundraising/appeals/christmas2010/

Your views wanted – help us develop our new website

It’s an exciting time for our charity, as we’re working on developing our new website. The new site will be separate from the Royal Brompton & Harefield NHS Foundation Trust website, and have its own URL.

We want the site to be informative, useful and friendly, with some user generated content – you’ll be able to set up fundraising pages and make donations directly from our own site without having to go to a third party site (although you can still use those!).

So we’d like to know a bit more about how you use the internet – and whether or not you’ve used our site before. Let us know the kinds of information you’d like to see, along with a bit about your experiences of using other charity sites.

We’ve created a very short survey, which you can complete anonymously. But if you’d like to become part of a test group giving us your feedback as the site develops, then feel free to include your name and email address.

The survey is at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/Z8Z3S82.

Thanks for your help!!

The blog begins…

Welcome to the charity’s first blog post!

For those of you who don’t know us, we’re a registered charity dedicated to supporting the internationally famous Royal Brompton & Harefield NHS Foundation Trust – the leading specialist centres in the UK for the treatment of heart and lung diseases. Although funding from the NHS ensures that our hospitals can provide an excellent service, there’s always the need for more and that’s where the charity steps in.

We make funds available to buy specialist state of the art medical equipment, fund groundbreaking research leading to new treatments and a greater understanding of diseases, and also to fund amenities to help make our patients’ stays as comfortable as possible under difficult circumstances. Some of our patients are with us for months at a time, so small facilities such as a comfortable chair or access to a computer, can make a real difference.

Over the coming months, we’re going to be adding news, events, and Q&As to our blog, and hopefully also having some posts from guest bloggers, so watch this space.

In the meantime, you can check out our website, become a fan on Facebook, and follow us on Twitter.