Francis House Children's Hospice

Francis House supports approximately 2,000 people at any one time with respite care, homecare, sibling support, end of life care and emotional and bereavement support. Francis House is a lifeline to more than 500 families from across Greater Manchester including Stockport, Oldham, Bury, Rochdale, Manchester, Salford and Trafford. They provide high levels of clinical care to the families of children and young adults with life-limiting and life-threatening conditions.

Children, young people and family members are welcomed into a friendly, home from home environment. The support they are offered includes physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual care from a dedicated multi-disciplinary care team. Telephone Support is available 24 hours a day 365 days a year. They work with families from thirty seven Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs). The Hospice is not part of statutory provision, the care that we provide is additional to that obtainable from the National Health Service. The Hospice needs 4.7 million pounds in charitable donations each year to continue to provide long-term support to the families in greatest need.

One of their aims is to enable children, teenagers and young adults to live life to the full, often helping to fulfill dreams. Many of these dreams are the kind of things most of us take for granted in our own lives, but are difficult to accomplish when coping with disability or illness. Francis House along with other children’s hospices is at the forefront of specialist palliative care provision, caring for children with a wide variety of life-limiting and life-threatening conditions.

For many years, Blake has supplied Francis House with thousands of envelopes for its supporter newsletter mailing. This year Catrina Crofts nominated Francis House to receive a £500 donation from Blake Envelopes

She said: “When I became aware of the respite, support, care and love that Francis House offer to the children and their families, I was in awe of the work that they do. It is vital that the charity can continue to help the little ones and their families – so when the opportunity arose for me to nominate a cause, I immediately thought of Francis House and the team there. When I was informed that my nomination was successful, I was delighted and moved – I cannot think of a more beautiful place for my nominated donation to go to.”

The gift from Blake will enable the much-loved charity to continue to expand and develop its services supporting hundreds of children and young people with life-limiting conditions and their families.

Francis House opened its doors to families in 1991 and throughout its history has put the needs of the whole family at the heart of everything it does. There is no upper-age limit at the hospice, and this ensures that anyone who is referred as a child can continue to come for support, care, and respite for as long as they need it.