“Your child is critically ill and needs urgent specialist care.” The words that can shatter whole worlds. Immediate thoughts turn to survival and outcomes. Your nearest specialist hospital may be hours away. But what about the journey? Where will you sleep when your child is in the hospital? Where will you eat? Who can you talk to? How will we cope?
Your support would help us continue on our mission to provide free accommodation to families who need us most to be close to their child when they are in a specialist children’s hospital across the UK. A “home away from home” when you need it most. We offer so much more to families than a bed for the night. By supporting us you would give a family an invaluable home away from home. Each day, our House teams welcome new families into our safe, non-clinical, homely environments and invite them to access facilities such as: kitchens, dining rooms, laundry, lounges, playrooms and gardens.
Founded in 1989, Ronald McDonald’s House Charities (RMHC) UK’s vision is for every child in hospital to have their families close by, and that those families are fully supported and actively involved in their child’s care. We are an independent charity which has benefitted from being McDonald’s chosen charity for the past 30 years to benefit from public donations and restaurant fundraising.
Our mission is to ensure every specialist children’s hospital in the UK has free, homely and supportive accommodation for families. We’ve kept over 50,000 families together over the past 30 years. Our 11 Houses across the UK supported 5,720 families in 2019 offering a “home away from home” at no cost to stay. Our longest staying family in the Evelina was 559 night which cost the charity £13,975 for their duration. On average a family would stay in one of our Houses for 20 nights.
When a child is receiving specialist medical care at hospital, a parent’s priority is to be by their side. Most children’s hospitals provide a fold down bed or bed chair, but owing to limited space, only one parent can sleep by their child’s bedside. If the child is in hospital for only a few days, then these sleeping arrangements are suffice. However, for many children receiving specialist care and treatment can last weeks, months or even years.
A specialist children’s hospital is on average 99 miles from home with critically ill children facing a range of life threatening or life limiting conditions including oncology, cardiology or major trauma. Despite operating at capacity, each House receives daily referrals from their partnered hospitals with many families having to wait for a room to be made available.
