Category Archives: Things We’ve Done

Momentum Meeting

October 15, 2014 by Peter · Leave a comment

Claudia, Darren and Amy are meeting with the lovely people at Momentum today. They have done some great work at Kingston Hospital and we are hoping to work with them on improvements to St George’s.

I have been playing some more with the website. I have now gone right through the Christian’s Story Page and made every day an individual entry on the blog, rather than a long page.

This means that I can now filter out all the fund raising posts, which I have linked to in the menu or all the posts about Christian, which is what the new Christian’s Story menu link now points to.

It  now makes it possible to link to any individual story or fund raising event and share it on Facebook or Twitter.

I think it’s time I stopped fiddling now.

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A great donation for a fabulous cause

September 23, 2014 by Peter · Leave a comment

Thank you to the fantastic Lancashire foundation who donated £3,400 to pay for an amazing piece of kit (http://www.accuvein.com/) that makes inserting cannulas (needles for blood) much less painful for children. We have bought four of these wonderful machines together with Samuel’s Charity.

Thank you to Adam King for putting The Christian Blandford Fund forward for this.

Martin, from Samuel’s charity, explained the need for these very well…

We are looking to buy two more infrared scanners that shows where veins are so injections are made first time, every time.This is huge. No one likes injections but it can take 2,3,4 or sometimes more attempts to find a vein, especially after weeks or months of treatment. This is not only painful but very distressing for many kids (and adults!). Some medicines make you more sensitive so an injection feels more like being stabbed than a ‘sharp scratch’. Very often prolonged medicine treatment like Chemotherapy does this. Not to mention the psychological impact of worrying about frequent and painful injections.Now, because of support and donations, we bought one of these amazing pieces of equipment, an Accuview. Being able to get the vein first time cuts down the amount of pain and upset hugely. But that’s not all. Small kids have small veins and often you have to ‘root around’ (a medical term, apparently!) to find the right position. The Accuview solves this – they can get in the vein first time and no rooting around, seriously reducing the pain down.I spoke to the nurses yesterday and they all loved the Accuview, even the most senior nurses were raving about it!

This one piece of equipment has already made many kids on the ward much happier, and their days will not be as overshadowed with the worry of painful, repeated attempts for injections.

This doesn’t just help the children, though. As a parent I hate to see my kids go through pain. It was one of the hardest things I have ever done asking Samuel to have repeated and painful procedures, knowing it would hurt, and not being able to take the pain away or protect him. With Accuview we can go some way to doing this and that means so much to me.

Each one costs a few thousand pounds so we still need help as we need two more of these amazing machines for the other childrens wards at St Georges Hospital.

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Christmas gifts for the children at St George’s

December 27, 2013 by Peter · Leave a comment

We have had a great day handing out presents to the Children who are unfortunate enough to be at St George’s over Christmas. Christian was a fab Elf and we had lots of help from the wonderful staff at the hospital. Henry stepped in as official photographer and took some photos which are here. I have included a hi-res copy which parents can use for personal use as they wish, just press the download button on the photo you want.

 

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Merry Christmas!

December 28, 2012 by Peter · Leave a comment

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas

It is becoming an annual event, The Bowler and Hancox Families wrap up the presents and Peter, Henry and Christian pop over to St George’s as Santa and his two helpers. Today was very special with some really lovely children who seemed very happy with the visit. We hope they all get back to the comfort of their homes soon.

The photos are all here, we have made it so the photos are all downloadable in hi-res for the parents of the children that Santa saw.

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Christian Meets Mark Owen and Opens a Garden

April 27, 2012 by Peter · Leave a comment

The Christian Blandford Fund made a significant contribution toward this amazing new garden at St George’s. It is a wonderful private space for children to get away from the wards. Mark Owen was very kind to come and open it. He was fantastic, signing loads of autographs, posing for photos, visiting the wards, and presenting the hospital with a £20,000 from The Take That Foundation. The photos are here.

Christian and Mark

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Christmas visit to St George’s

December 6, 2011 by Peter · Leave a comment

Just before Christmas, Christian, Peter and Henry went to St George’s again to be Santa and elves and hand out presents to children unfortunate enough to be in hospital during the festive period.

The Bowler family and the Hancox family did a great job of wrapping all the present and delivering them so they were ready for Santa to hand them out. This year we bought more than ever so plenty were left over for arrivals on or just after Christmas. Neil Berrecloth popped in to help and the play specialists, very efficient in sorting out the right presents for each child.

There are more photos on Facebook

The next day, I got this lovely e-mail

I just wanted to say “thank-you” on behalf of my son Alex, who received a lovely teddy. It really cheered him up, as did the visit from father Xmas and his little helper: his eyes lit up when he saw them (I think he was thinking “oh no, the door’s opening, someone in a uniform is coming to do something nasty to me”) and was lovely for his dad and mum to see. As you can appreciate, being in an isolation room at Xmas is pretty grim for a kid. Alex has been poorly all his life and is a “regular” at St George’s, despite living 60 miles away in West Sussex. The distance makes it particularly difficult as his brother William, who he is very close to, has to stay at his Grandma’s during his many stays at St George’s, so we are all split up as a family. Luckily, we were put on “home leave” for Xmas but must return next Friday.

I think your charity is brilliant. As soon as I read the poster in the posh new parents room I could tell that the person who wrote it had a real insight into life for kids and their families in this situation that only personal experience (unfortunately) can bring.

Merry Xmas to you all and keep up the good work!

Santa and the elves

 

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New Laptops for St George’s hospital

May 16, 2011 by Peter · Leave a comment

We are in the process of ordering 8 shiny new laptops for the Pinkney ward at St George’s. They will be available for use by children and their parents. This will allow the kids to play games online, watch DVDs, use social networking sites and do homework. They will also be equipped with Microsoft Office so parents can catch up on work while they are on the ward.

We would like to thank the lovely people at Seareach UK, for offering to provide security labels for free. We contacted them for a quote and they offered us 100 labels free of charge. Thank you very much guys!

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Father Christmas Visit to St George’s

December 30, 2010 by Peter · Leave a comment

Peter put on a Father Christmas outfit and went to St George’s to hand out presents with his two little helpers Henry and Christian.

Santa and his little helpers
There are more photos here. Some parents wanted copies of the photos, they can be ordered directly from photobox. If you have not used them before send me an e-mail at peter@theblandfords.com and I’ll send you an offer code for 50 free prints. A big thank you to Hugh Miller, the very talented photographer who took the photos for us and donated his time and expertise.

It was a lot of fun, made easy by the very organised play specialists at St George’s. Thank you also to Darren, Corrine, Emily and Amy for collecting wrapping and delivering the presents to the Hospital, they truly did all the hard work!

The presents were all paid for from The Christian Blandford Fund and we are very grateful to the enormous support that we receive from the friends that support us.

It was great to see Maz, one of the very skillful nurses at St George’s using the portable ultra sound machine that we supplied. At over £20,000 it is not in the NHS budget but makes inserting needles into children’s veins a much less traumatic and painful experience. Something we felt strongly was worth our investment!

So we can continue this kind of work, please consider us if you are raising money for a charity event or are about to make a festive charity donation. Thank and Merry christmas and a Happy and Healthy New Year!

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Thank you from St George’s

August 18, 2005 by Peter · Leave a comment

Christian has been very well recently, hence the lack of updates. His last chemotherapy is scheduled in less than two weeks, which is an important milestone that we’ve been looking forward to.

I have finally collected all the sponsorship money at the final amount raised is over £47,000. Thanks very much to all of you for your support. I have received a couple of letters from St. George’s which were very nice, they are here andhere.

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