Children's charity – donate to Rainbow Trust

Children’s charities in the UK operate for a variety of worthwhile causes. This can range from financial support, education, shelter, to food and healthcare services. With so many to choose from, it can be hard to know exactly where your money is going and how it will benefit the children that need it. When considering which charity to donate to, it can be helpful to think about causes close to your heart. Perhaps you may have personal experience of a charity, or a close family or friend has been touched by a particular organisation. Or maybe you feel passionately about a specific issue and want to support a charity that deals with this. Choosing a charity that has a personal interest to you can help connect you with the cause and help motivate supporters to get involved.

The number of seriously ill children in England has trebled over the last 17 years and is continuing to rise. Thousands of families must face the very real possibility that their child may die and struggle to cope on a day-to-day basis. Rainbow Trust Children’s Charity supports families who have a child aged 0-18 years with a life-threatening or terminal illness. The service Rainbow Trust provides is available at no cost to families.

With the generosity of our supporters, Rainbow Trust Children’s Charity has been supporting families with seriously or terminally ill children for 35 years.

Support is hugely varied and depends on the needs of each individual family but can include: listening to a family’s fears and anxieties, helping to explain illnesses, diagnosis, and treatments, keeping a seriously ill child company during hospital stays, driving families to medical appointments, and support through bereavement and grief. We support the whole family including parents, carers, the unwell child, brothers, sisters, and grandparents.

For example:

• As little as £10 could make the world of difference to a family struggling to cope with the death of their child by providing a memory box for a bereaved family.
• £30 would pay for an hour’s practical and emotional support for a family caring for a seriously ill child, helping them make the most of their precious time together.
• £60 could provide bereavement support to help a family cope with the death of a child. £105 would provide half a day of support to a frightened and confused sibling of a seriously ill child.
• £1,780 is the average cost of support for a family with a seriously ill child for a year.
• £44,500 will pay for a Family Support Worker for a year to support up to 25 families at any one time depending on the child’s condition.

These figures give an indication of how your donation, big and small, can change the lives of families caring for a seriously ill child.

Regular givers are vital because they help a children’s charity to provide more sustained support to the families that need it. By choosing to become a regular donator to a children’s charity, you help us to make plans for the future and make a long-term impact upon the children we support. £10 a month equates to just 34p a day, which can make a world of difference to a family struggling to care for their seriously ill child. Regular givers also allow us to invest in bigger projects and to expand our services in new and exciting ways. It also means regular givers can spread the cost of their gift over the course of a year and therefore may find it easier to budget accordingly. Consider becoming a regular giver to a children’s charity to be a part of long-term change.