The Donna Louise Children’s Hospice was registered as a charity in 1999. They were set up to respond to the need for a children’s hospice service for Staffordshire and Cheshire. The charity takes it names from a young local girl, Donna Louise Hackney who sadly passed away from a life limiting condition at the age of 16. Donna’s family wanted to help other children and families in a similar situation and so began fundraising in her name. As the fundraising for a purpose build hospice continued, a community nursing team was established in 2002 to provide care for children and their families in the comfort of their own homes. By August 2003, the Hospice building was finished and fully-equipped and they opened the doors to families on August 4th 2003.
The Donna Louise’s mission statement is to provide “quality palliative care service to children, young people, and their families, through effective partnership working aligned with our values.” Paediatric Palliative Care is a complete approach to treating serious illness that focuses on the physical, psychological and spiritual needs of the child. Its goal is to achieve the best quality of life available to the child or young person by relieving suffering and controlling pain and symptoms.
Viv Gilroy, President of the CII in Stoke –On-Trent presented the Donna Louise a cheque of £1238.75 to help with the up keep and every day running of the Hospice. The CII is the leading professional body for global financial services and comprises of over 112,000 members in more than 150 countries globally. Industry professionals volunteer their spare time to provide seminars, training, mentoring, and career guidance to CII members, delivering education to over 1 million students in the last decade.
Here at Connect we are taking part in the Donna Louise Enterprise Challenge; we will split up into departmental teams as there can be no more than 8 members within the team. The Donna Louise will give each team £50 and we need to raise as much money as we can to support the children and families at the Donna Louise.
Encouraging some healthy competition within the company, the teams are:
- Taxi Team
- Motor Trade Team
- IT Team
If you are popping into the office for quote, please give what you can to help the teams raise money for this amazing charity.
Sources: The Donna Louise.