Hospital is closer to £7.5m goal thanks to good hearts
CHARITY DONATES £170K TOWARDS CHILDREN’S SERVICE
LEICESTER Children’s Hospital Appeal has reached a milestone in its fund-raising efforts thanks to a £170,000 donation from Heart Link.
The money means the campaign to help create a new children’s hospital in the city has now raised £6 million against its £7.5 million overall target.
Heart Link has pledged the donation to fund eight rooms in the new Leicester Children’s Hospital, as well as much-needed equipment, continuing the many years of funding equipment and facilities at the children’s cardiac service.
The service, which will be moved from Glenfield Hospital next spring, will support children from across the East Midlands with heart conditions and will sit in the Kensington building on the Leicester Royal Infirmary campus.
Health bosses hope to transform the rest of the building into a standalone children’s hospital as part of £450 million plans to revamp the city’s hospitals.
A public consultation detailing the proposals is under way.
Heart Link was set up in 1981 by Geoff and Gill Smart after their daughter Amanda was born with a serious heart condition, and there were no facilities for families to stay with their sick child at the then Groby Road Hospital.
Since then, Heart Link has contributed millions of pounds providing equipment, parent facilities, as well as funding for research and training.
Sadly, both Gill and Amanda have died – Amanda in December 2018 and Gill in June this year. The charity also lost one of its longest-serving trustees, John Rigby, in May.
It is hoped that Amanda, Gill and John’s memories will be commemorated within the funded rooms for all the hard work, time and commitment they gave to raising funds for Heart Link and to supporting families and children over very many years.
Heart Link trustee Shirley Barnes said: “Everything Gill did was from the heart. She lived, ate, slept and breathed Heart Link.
“Everything she did was for families and kids.
“She was there right from the very beginning and she worked so, so hard to raise hundreds of thousands of pounds for children’s heart services in Leicester alongside other trustees no longer with us, like John Rigby.
“All of us at Heart Link work to do whatever is necessary to make things better for the children on the cardiac wards and the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit.
“It is for those families and the amazing staff on those wards that we are making this £170,000 donation in support of.” Leicester Hospitals Charity’s director Lisa Davies said: “We are incredibly touched to have received this generous donation to our Leicester Children’s Hospital Appeal from Heart Link.
“Gill Smart was an amazing individual who had such a remarkable impact on developing and then saving the children’s heart services at Glenfield Hospital.
“We are proud to honour Gill’s legacy by supporting the relocation of these vital services to a new, dedicated children’s hospital that will benefit families like the ones she supported for over 30 years long into the future.”
Anyone wanting to contribute towards making the Leicester Children’s Hospital Appeal a success can visit:
All of us at Heart Link work to do whatever is necessary to make things better for the children on wards
Shirley Barnes