Acorns Children's Hospice boosted by donation from the Santander foundation

Acorns Children’s Hospice has received £5,000 to fund support groups for young people with life limiting and life threatening conditions. The charity offers a holistic service to meet the specialist needs of both the children and young people and their families, including the bereaved.

The donation was provided to Acorns for the Three Counties, the charity’s Worcester based hospice, by the Santander Foundation, which offers Discovery Grants to UK registered charities for projects that help disadvantaged people in local communities.

Acorns provides a network of specialist palliative care for life limited and life threatened children and support for their families. This care includes: emergency and end of life care; short breaks to give family and carers a rest from caring; help in the home and access to a range of support groups. A package of care is tailored for each individual child which includes their medical, emotional, cultural, religious and spiritual needs.

The support groups will help give young people more choice and control over their lives and will address issues such as day to day living, budgeting and social skills. They also give opportunities for young people with life limiting and life threatening conditions to come together, make friends and support one another.

Lynne Carter, Head of Fundraising at Acorns, said: “We are thrilled with this donation which will make a real difference for our vital work with children and young people. We rely on fundraising and donations like this to meet the costs to provide our services every year, so we thank the Santander Foundation for their generosity and support.”

James Crawford, Branch Director at Santander’s Worcester branch, said: “The Santander Foundation makes hundreds of donations every year to good causes throughout the UK. We are committed to playing a key part in the community and we are delighted to be supporting Acorns Children’s Hospice Trust and hope the donation makes a real difference to local people.”
 

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Notes to Editors:

Media Contact
Leonora Burtenshaw at Santander 
Email: leonora.burtenshaw@santander.co.uk      Tel: 020 7756 4543

David Chamberlain, tel: 01564 825020 / 07817 612 422 / david.chamberlain@acorns.org.uk 
Jamie Perry, tel: 01564 825063/ 07971 913 042 / jamie.perry@acorns.org.uk  

Note to editors:

Due to the sensitive nature of Acorns care services it refrains from using the words ‘terminal’ or ‘terminally ill’ in its press releases and public communications when describing the children who use Acorns and the conditions that they have. Instead, Acorns uses the words ‘life limited’, ‘life limiting’, or ‘life threatening’. Acorns kindly requests that you respect this in your communications when referring to Acorns Children's Hospice. Acorns children have a lot of living to do. Thank you.

This year Acorns is celebrating its 30th anniversary. Acorns in Birmingham, Selly Oak was opened in 1988 by Diana Princess of Wales. Acorns in the Black Country, Walsall opened in 1999 and Acorns for the Three Counties, Worcester opened in 2005.

To find out more about this year’s 30th celebrations and how you can get involved, visit www.acorns.org.uk/30years

Acorns is currently the UK and the world’s largest children’s hospice charity, as measured by the number of children who we are helping to care for.

It costs nearly £10 million a year to run our care services providing care for the child and support for families. Acorns relies heavily on the community to fund the majority of its activities.

To find out more about Acorns, please visit www.acorns.org.uk/30years

Santander Foundation
The Santander Foundation is at the heart of the Bank’s community activities, providing grants to small charities and social enterprises working with disadvantaged people to fund skills, knowledge and innovation projects across the UK. Discovery Grants of up to £5,000 are available to support three types of activity:
 

  • Explorer: improving people’s knowledge
  • Transformer: supporting skills and experience
  • Changemaker: innovative solutions to social challenges


Over the last five years, the Santander Foundation has provided £26 million in funding to 13,914 UK charities through Discovery Grants and Staff Matched Donations. For more information please visit: www.santanderfoundation.org.uk

Santander UK is a financial services provider in the UK that offers a wide range of personal and commercial financial products and services. It has brought real competition to the UK, through its innovative products for retail customers and relationship banking model for UK SMEs. At 31 December 2017, the bank serves around 14 million active customers with c19,500 employees and operates through 806 branches (which includes 61 university branches) and 64 regional Corporate Business Centres. Santander UK is subject to the full supervision of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) in the UK. Santander UK plc customers are protected by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) in the UK.