Most of our hospital work is funded by charities who support hospitals in various ways.
We recently carried out two projects in Surrey that were funded by Momentum Children’s Charity, a charity which will be celebrating its 20th anniversary in May.
The charity was founded by Bianca Effemey who was working with children who had cancer and noticed them getting painful mouth ulcers when they were given chemotherapy. Ice lollies helped but they had no freezer to store them in. Bianca had previously worked at John Lewis so she phoned them and they donated a free freezer. Bianca realised there was a need to support children going through the cancer journey and part of this meant improving the environment in hospital for them. And so the charity was formed.
The charity developed into two arms – one offering family support and hospital projects to improve environments and the other is the fundraising arm which does a lot of community and corporate fundraising.
The Trust’s first project was a Parents’ Room at Kingston Hospital. From that small start, the charity is now a well-oiled machine and helps ten partner hospitals in London and South West Surrey but also South East England down as far as Worthing Hospital and East Surrey and St Georges in Tooting, South London, supporting families and hospital projects, mainly to improve the environment for patients and their families. Bianca was awarded an OBE this year for Services to Young People with life-challenging conditions.
Momentum discovered Grosvenor Interiors when they saw some shared projects we had carried out at the Royal Marsden Hospital – Bianca thought the work was amazing. She found out who had carried out the work, arranged to meet Colin and then started working with us. Since then, we have worked on many projects together.
So how does a hospital get the funding from the charity? In Momentum’s case, they write to their hospitals once a year to ask what is on their wish list. The hospitals then reply with a formal statement of need signed off by the Chief Executive and from this, the charity offers what they can do in the following year. In 2023, a decision was made to upgrade the garden at Kingston Hospital Paediatrics and upgrade the facilities in the parents’ room used by the Hascombe Ward at Royal Surrey Hospital.
Kingston Garden Project
This started as one big garden with lots of issues with the ground surface and some technical issues with flooding etc. It was originally used by Oncology but due to its poor state, it was under-utilised. So Kingston Hospital asked Momentum to makeover the entire garden.
Momentum asked us to design wall art to cover two walls with a pictorial story around the garden and link it into projects on the ward.
We chatted to Caroline Futter, Lead Play Specialist for Sunshine and Dolphin Ward (inpatient paediatric wards), who explained:
“The garden is utilised by paediatric patients aged 0-18 and also by the staff. We care very much about staff wellbeing so staff utilise the space for time out or even lunch. and the garden was designed with that in mind. The design and construction of the actual garden was done by the Kingston Hospital Charity but the toys and Wall Art were provided by Momentum through Grosvenor Interiors. We chose the items carefully because we had to appeal to a wide age group. One of the most popular things is the Connect 4 game. It just stands outside and is utilised by everyone in different ways: babies enjoy slotting in the coins and children challenge parents. The table tennis and football table are also incredibly popular with staff, children and parents alike. It’s great to see the space utilised in such a way.
Momentum are extremely happy with all the projects we have worked on together.
Ellen Parker, Matron at Royal Surrey Hospital Hascombe Ward, told us: “ It’s fabulous! It’s no longer used as a store cupboard: it now has multiple uses – we’ve used it for quiet conversations with parents and families and we’ve also used it in its true form for families of children undergoing end of life treatment – the family have a space to go to but are still near to their child. It’s a calm space to go to during a really difficult period.
It’s also used for families of children who are here long term – it gives the parents a little bit of respite: they can step out for half an hour or even sleep overnight, then go back and spend precious moments with their child. It’s also now a space where we can have meetings with parents and have sometimes difficult conversations: the benefits of the change of use and the need for that room cannot be measured. We are very grateful and thankful for the time and care given to us in putting together this fantastic resource. It all came together really well – the workmanship, the guys from Grosvenor – everything went very smoothly with no problems. We’ve had very positive reactions to the new room – people have commented on what a great room it is, how useful it has been and how extremely grateful they are to have it. The choice of the décor is lovely.“
Momentum have told us that they think we are fantastic at communication and co-ordination, that we have great project management skills and a “can do” mentality which is very much appreciated by them, hence the reason we’ve worked with them on so many projects. They also told us that our workmanship is great quality.