Our campaign is now complete. 16 supporters helped us raise £595.00
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Throughout the pandemic Richard House has continued to stay open to support the families who rely on the services we provide, as it has done for over 20 years. All of this could be lost due to devastating effects that COVID-19 is having. Many of our events were cancelled this year and we anticipate that many more will be cancelled in 2021. Richard House is reliant on raising £3.5 million every year to fund our services and this will be a difficult target to meet if we cannot raise £300,000 by the end of 2020.
One of the families that rely on the support of Richard House is Katie and Neil's. Together they have three beautiful children Eva, 7, Henry, 5, and Alice, 3. When Henry was born, his brain was deprived of oxygen and he suffered from Hypoxic Ischemic Encephalopathy.
Due to this Henry has a whole host of complex health conditions, including four limb Cerebral Palsy, that means he requires 24-hour care and attention. For the first two years of his life, home for Henry was the hospital and as time went on, the palliative care team realised he would always need 24-hour complex care and that Katie and Neil would need assistance looking after Henry in order to take him home. This is when Katie and Neil were referred to Richard House. Katie said that they initially had their reservations, but they knew by coming to Richard House they would be able to bring Henry home. Almost 3 years on, we asked Katie, what Richard House has meant for their family:
They are just able to help in such a caring but also practical way. It is always hard to have to leave Henry anywhere, but to know you are leaving him people who are so caring and loving, makes all the difference. They treat him like he is part of the furniture as soon as he walks through the door and so are we. We would be lost without it. For us it is important that our girls Eva and Alice also get to have our attention without Henry, to focus on them, even if only for a few days. It gives us the chance to spend time with the girls while they are little, as it is really important that they have a childhood and they can do whatever they want to do and that we can do that with them. And Richard House really helps and supports us to do that as well. Otherwise we would be contained within a very small world.
Richard House allows families to rest and recuperate. This has become evermore important during COVID-19 as we have all had to put our lives on pause and protect the ones we love. For some of us this may have meant not being able to go into work or visit our family and friends. For many of the families we support this has meant shielding for the last eight months and being contained within this very small world Katie talks about. Richard House has stayed open during the entire COVID-19 pandemic. We have been there to offer families a chance to rest, and a chance to have some form of normality. We have offered them the opportunity to expand this very small world that COVID-19 has enforced, opening our garden during the warmer months and offering a place to relax.
We have all been home, my husband and I work and the girls haven't been at school and nursery as they normally would and Henry hasn't been at school himself. So obviously it has been more intense, so much that we don't get to step away from it and lots of people have experienced this. We shielded for a long time and have had to keep our distance, so that kind of has its own pressure. It was quite nerve-racking, just the simple things that we would have to do normally, like go to the chemist, which needs to happen really regularly, became really strategic, and that would be our only time leaving the house. We were also worrying about not getting things in our food shopping, then how would we get out to get it. It was an intensified situation that was already intense.
COVID-19 has meant many of us have pushed stop on our lives but our families cant do this, and life needs to continue on. During September and October, Katie and Neil had to call on the assistance of Richard House. Henry is almost 6, and is growing bigger and heavier every day. For families like Katie and Neil's, it is vital that Richard House still be here in the months and years to come.
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