Little Willows Wish – a charity helping the families of critically ill children

Little Willows Wish, a charity helping the families of critically ill children at Bristol Children's Hospital, has received £1,000 from the Pavers Foundation. Store Manager at the Pavers store in Bideford, Nikki Dunn, applied for the grant through to support Little Willows Wish, which was set up by her daughter's friend Sophie.

 

In September 2017 Sophie's daughter, Willow was born with three rare heart defects at Bristol children's hospital. Unfortunately, despite the hospitals best efforts to save her, Willow passed away just three weeks old.

 

During their time spent at the Hospital, Sophie was shocked at the lack of basic help for families staying with their loved ones, because of this, in Willows memory they have set up Little Willows Wish.

 

Little Willows Wish is a charity raising money and awareness with hopes to help other families going through a similar situation. They work to provide supply boxes for the families staying away from home and in hospital. Often these are items many families don't have time to source themselves, as they are needed by their child's bedside, or they simply can’t afford them.

 

A supply box provided by the charity, Little Willows Wish

A supply box provided by Little Willows Wish

 

A typical supply box includes food, toiletries, towels, washing powder, vouchers and much more. A lot of the time families don't have time to pack basic essentials as they are rushed into hospital with no warning. Little Willows Wish is there to support them when this happens.

 

The team at Little Willows Wish individually assess a family's circumstance and adapt the support and care they offer, for example, if a family is in need of help with food or petrol when commuting from a distance, they will provide vouchers to help. Alternatively, they will also supply items to better suit families with other children, including items for them too.

 

Nikki Dunn, Store Manager at Pavers said:

 

“I chose Little Willows Wish as Sophie is an amazing lady who set up the charity after losing her daughter Willow. The supply boxes help families with items that they wouldn’t consider taking to hospital with them. It’s great that so many families can be helped with the £1000”.

 

Sophie Whiting, Founder of Little Willows Wish said:

 

“I can't express how much this donation means to us. We are a very new and small charity having only just registered in December 2018. We provide supply boxes of everyday essentials to South West families of critically ill children.

When we were first approached about being nominated, I was extremely humbled and excited to be considered. Then the news came that we had been granted £1,000 and all I could do was cry with pure happiness. To receive such a huge amount in our early days means we have been able to reach even more families then we had anticipated in our first year. Thank you so much to the Pavers Foundation and to Nikki who nominated us".

 

The Pavers Foundation is overjoyed to be supporting such a fantastic cause and we hope that with this donation the charity can go on to support more and more families.