Effectiveness

The Children’s Trust, Tadworth

Rehabilitating children with brain injuries

Each year in the UK at least 5,000 children and young people will sustain a head injury that will lead to a serious impairment. The Children’s Trust provides care, education and therapy to children with multiple disabilities and complex health needs as well as rehabilitation to children with acquired brain injuries.

The Trust’s new £7m, state-of-the-art rehabilitation centre and hydrotherapy pool, opened in July 2009, has enabled the Trust to help even more children and young people whose lives have been devastated by a tragic accident or serious illness.

The Trust opened the UK’s first dedicated residential rehabilitation unit in 1987, but in a 1930s ward block, which was not really fit for purpose.  As time went by, the Trust was seeing the referral of many more ‘minimally conscious’ children (unable to walk, sit up, feed or communicate) and a rise in children dependent on a ventilator or tracheostomy as a result of their brain injury.  These children required more specialist facilities, equipment and staff skills, so there was an urgent need to improve the residential accommodation.  The 40-year-old hydrotherapy pool also needed replacing.

So a new rehabilitation centre was planned which would allow the Trust to increase the number of beds and provide a modern home-from-home with all the specialist equipment needed by the children.  This would include single en-suite bedrooms, communal living areas, quiet spaces and family accommodation. The addition of a hydrotherapy centre to the project brought the total costs to over £7m, which had to be raised entirely from voluntary income. This was a huge challenge for the Trust’s fundraising team, as the previous biggest building project was £2.8m.

The funding for the centre was achieved ahead of time and children moved into the new building in April 2009 as the Trust began celebrations for its 25th Anniversary. The fundraising team secured a record number of corporate partnerships including official charity for the 2009 London Marathon. The fundraising team exceeded budget finishing the year with an income of £6.2m - just under a 22 per cent increase.

Mr Rob Wood
Marketing & Communications Manager
Tadworth Court
Tadworth
Surrey
KT20 5RU
01737 365 077
www.thechildrenstrust.org.uk
Reg no: 288018

 

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